Towards a new generation of Learning Management Systems

Vogten, H., & Koper, R. (2014) Towards a new generation of Learning Management Systems. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, Barcelona, Spain.In this paper we argue that a centrally governed Learning Management System (LMS) still has ample legitimacy in an information society that is ever more adopting cloud computing services in daily life. We argued that control over services and produced data is essential from the perspective of an educational institute for reasons of accountability, quality control, legislation, privacy and reliability. However, the current generation learning management systems are primarily geared to provide ‘additional’ online learning. In ‘real’ online learning teachers and students almost never need to meet face-to-face. All instruction, tests, communication and collaboration is organised using internet and mobile technologies. We propose a paradigm shift for the next generation LMS, discarding the course as key concept in favour of the social learning network concept. We argue that a generic social collaborative portal platform is a good foundation for the development of this next generation LMS. We support our arguments by presenting a real world case and we conclude that we can reuse 80% of the standard code

A semantic framework for ontology usage analysis

The Semantic Web envisions a Web where information is accessible and processable by computers as well as humans. Ontologies are the cornerstones for realizing this vision of the Semantic Web by capturing domain knowledge by defining the terms and the relationship between these terms to provide a formal representation of the domain with machine-understandable semantics. Ontologies are used for semantic annotation, data interoperability and knowledge assimilation and dissemination.In the literature, different approaches have been proposed to build and evolve ontologies, but in addition to these, one more important concept needs to be considered in the ontology lifecycle, that is, its usage. Measuring the “usage” of ontologies will help us to effectively and efficiently make use of semantically annotated structured data published on the Web (formalized knowledge published on the Web), improve the state of ontology adoption and reusability, provide a usage-based feedback loop to the ontology maintenance process for a pragmatic conceptual model update, and source information accurately and automatically which can then be utilized in the other different areas of the ontology lifecycle. Ontology Usage Analysis is the area which evaluates, measures and analyses the use of ontologies on the Web. However, in spite of its importance, no formal approach is present in the literature which focuses on measuring the use of ontologies on the Web. This is in contrast to the approaches proposed in the literature on the other concepts of the ontology lifecycle, such as ontology development, ontology evaluation and ontology evolution. So, to address this gap, this thesis is an effort in such a direction to assess, analyse and represent the use of ontologies on the Web.In order to address the problem and realize the abovementioned benefits, an Ontology Usage Analysis Framework (OUSAF) is presented. The OUSAF Framework implements a methodological approach which is comprised of identification, investigation, representation and utilization phases. These phases provide a complete solution for usage analysis by allowing users to identify the key ontologies, and investigate, represent and utilize usage analysis results. Various computation components with several methods, techniques, and metrics for each phase are presented and evaluated using the Semantic Web data crawled from the Web. For the dissemination of ontology-usage-related information accessible to machines and humans, The U Ontology is presented to formalize the conceptual model of the ontology usage domain. The evaluation of the framework, solution components, methods, and a formalized conceptual model is presented, indicating the usefulness of the overall proposed solution

Chemical enterprise model and decision-making framework for sustainable chemical product design

The chemical product substitution process is undertaken by chemical industries for complying with regulations, like REACH in Europe. Initially devoted to chemists, chemicals substitution is nowadays a complex process involving corporate, business and engineering stakeholders across the chemical enterprise for orienting the search toward a sustainable solution. We formalize a decision making process framework dedicated to the sustainable chemical product design activity in an industrial context. The framework aims at improving the sharing of information and knowledge and at enabling a collaborative work across the chemical enterprise stakeholders at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. It is supported by information and communication technologies (ICT) and integrates a computer aided molecular design tool. During the initial intelligence phase, a systemic analysis of the needs and usages enables to define the product requirements. In the design phase, they are compiled with the help of a facilitator to generate the input file of a computer aided product design tool. This multiobjective tool is designed to find mixtures with molecular fragments issued from renewable raw materials, and is able to handle environment-health and safety related properties along with process physicochemical properties. The final choice phase discusses the solution relevancy and provides feedback, before launching the product manufacturing. The framework is illustrated by the search of a bio-sourced water–solvent mixture formulation for lithographic blanket wash used in printing industry. The sustainability of the solution is assessed by using the sustainability shades metho

Blueprint model and language for engineering cloud applications

Abstract: The research presented in this thesis is positioned within the domain of engineering CSBAs. Its contribution is twofold: (1) a uniform specification language, called the Blueprint Specification Language (BSL), for specifying cloud services across several cloud vendors and (2) a set of associated techniques, called the Blueprint Manipulation Techniques (BMTs), for publishing, querying, and composing cloud service specifications with aim to support the flexible design and configuration of an CSBA.

Cause for alarm?: A multi-national, multi-institutional study of student-generated software designs

This paper reports a multi-national, multi-institutional study to investigate Computer Science students' understanding of software design and software design criteria. Students were recruited at two levels: those termed 'first competency' programmers, and those completing their Bachelor degrees. The study, including participants from 21 institutions over the academic year 2003/4, aimed to examine students' ability to generate software designs, to elicit students' understanding and valuation of key design activities, and to examine whether students at different stages in their undergraduate education display different understanding of software design. Differences were found in participants' recognition of ambiguity in requirements; in their use of formal (and semi-formal) design representation and in their prioritisation of design criteria

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

Model driven design and data integration in semantic web information systems

The Web is quickly evolving in many ways. It has evolved from a Web of documents into a Web of applications in which a growing number of designers offer new and interactive Web applications with people all over the world. However, application design and implementation remain complex, error-prone and laborious. In parallel there is also an evolution from a Web of documents into a Web of `knowledge' as a growing number of data owners are sharing their data sources with a growing audience. This brings the potential new applications for these data sources, including scenarios in which these datasets are reused and integrated with other existing and new data sources. However, the heterogeneity of these data sources in syntax, semantics and structure represents a great challenge for application designers. The Semantic Web is a collection of standards and technologies that offer solutions for at least the syntactic and some structural issues. If offers semantic freedom and flexibility, but this leaves the issue of semantic interoperability. In this thesis we present Hera-S, an evolution of the Model Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) method Hera. MDWEs allow designers to create data centric applications using models instead of programming. Hera-S especially targets Semantic Web sources and provides a flexible method for designing personalized adaptive Web applications. Hera-S defines several models that together define the target Web application. Moreover we implemented a framework called Hydragen, which is able to execute the Hera-S models to run the desired Web application. Hera-S' core is the Application Model (AM) in which the main logic of the application is defined, i.e. defining the groups of data elements that form logical units or subunits, the personalization conditions, and the relationships between the units. Hera-S also uses a so-called Domain Model (DM) that describes the content and its structure. However, this DM is not Hera-S specific, but instead allows any Semantic Web source representation as its DM, as long as its content can be queried by the standardized Semantic Web query language SPARQL. The same holds for the User Model (UM). The UM can be used for personalization conditions, but also as a source of user-related content if necessary. In fact, the difference between DM and UM is conceptual as their implementation within Hydragen is the same. Hera-S also defines a presentation model (PM) which defines presentation details of elements like order and style. In order to help designers with building their Web applications we have introduced a toolset, Hera Studio, which allows to build the different models graphically. Hera Studio also provides some additional functionality like model checking and deployment of the models in Hydragen. Both Hera-S and its implementation Hydragen are designed to be flexible regarding the user of models. In order to achieve this Hydragen is a stateless engine that queries for relevant information from the models at every page request. This allows the models and data to be changed in the datastore during runtime. We show that one way to exploit this flexibility is by applying aspect-orientation to the AM. Aspect-orientation allows us to dynamically inject functionality that pervades the entire application. Another way to exploit Hera-S' flexibility is in reusing specialized components, e.g. for presentation generation. We present a configuration of Hydragen in which we replace our native presentation generation functionality by the AMACONT engine. AMACONT provides more extensive multi-level presentation generation and adaptation capabilities as well aspect-orientation and a form of semantic based adaptation. Hera-S was designed to allow the (re-)use of any (Semantic) Web datasource. It even opens up the possibility for data integration at the back end, by using an extendible storage layer in our database of choice Sesame. However, even though theoretically possible it still leaves much of the actual data integration issue. As this is a recurring issue in many domains, a broader challenge than for Hera-S design only, we decided to look at this issue in isolation. We present a framework called Relco which provides a language to express data transformation operations as well as a collection of techniques that can be used to (semi-)automatically find relationships between concepts in different ontologies. This is done with a combination of syntactic, semantic and collaboration techniques, which together provide strong clues for which concepts are most likely related. In order to prove the applicability of Relco we explore five application scenarios in different domains for which data integration is a central aspect. This includes a cultural heritage portal, Explorer, for which data from several datasources was integrated and was made available by a mapview, a timeline and a graph view. Explorer also allows users to provide metadata for objects via a tagging mechanism. Another application is SenSee: an electronic TV-guide and recommender. TV-guide data was integrated and enriched with semantically structured data from several sources. Recommendations are computed by exploiting the underlying semantic structure. ViTa was a project in which several techniques for tagging and searching educational videos were evaluated. This includes scenarios in which user tags are related with an ontology, or other tags, using the Relco framework. The MobiLife project targeted the facilitation of a new generation of mobile applications that would use context-based personalization. This can be done using a context-based user profiling platform that can also be used for user model data exchange between mobile applications using technologies like Relco. The final application scenario that is shown is from the GRAPPLE project which targeted the integration of adaptive technology into current learning management systems. A large part of this integration is achieved by using a user modeling component framework in which any application can store user model information, but which can also be used for the exchange of user model data