Higher education institutions : subject profile

"This briefing provides an overview of Higher Education Institutions in Scotland. It provides key statistics and information on recent policy developments" -- front cover

TLAD 2011 Proceedings:9th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the ninth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2011), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2011 - the 28th British National Conference on Databases. TLAD 2011 is held on the 11th July at Manchester University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will present eight peer reviewed papers. Of these, six will be presented as full papers and two as short papers. These papers cover a number of themes, including: the teaching of data mining and data warehousing, databases and the cloud, and novel uses of technology in teaching and assessment. It is expected that these papers will stimulate discussion at the workshop itself and beyond. This year, the focus on providing a forum for discussion is enhanced through a panel discussion on assessment in database modules, with David Nelson (of the University of Sunderland), Al Monger (of Southampton Solent University) and Charles Boisvert (of Sheffield Hallam University) as the expert panel

TLAD 2011 Proceedings:9th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the ninth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2011), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2011 - the 28th British National Conference on Databases. TLAD 2011 is held on the 11th July at Manchester University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will present eight peer reviewed papers. Of these, six will be presented as full papers and two as short papers. These papers cover a number of themes, including: the teaching of data mining and data warehousing, databases and the cloud, and novel uses of technology in teaching and assessment. It is expected that these papers will stimulate discussion at the workshop itself and beyond. This year, the focus on providing a forum for discussion is enhanced through a panel discussion on assessment in database modules, with David Nelson (of the University of Sunderland), Al Monger (of Southampton Solent University) and Charles Boisvert (of Sheffield Hallam University) as the expert panel

A Secure and Fair Resource Sharing Model for Community Clouds

Cloud computing has gained a lot of importance and has been one of the most discussed segment of today\u27s IT industry. As enterprises explore the idea of using clouds, concerns have emerged related to cloud security and standardization. This thesis explores whether the Community Cloud Deployment Model can provide solutions to some of the concerns associated with cloud computing. A secure framework based on trust negotiations for resource sharing within the community is developed as a means to provide standardization and security while building trust during resource sharing within the community. Additionally, a model for fair sharing of resources is developed which makes the resource availability and usage transparent to the community so that members can make informed decisions about their own resource requirements based on the resource usage and availability within the community. Furthermore, the fair-share model discusses methods that can be employed to address situations when the demand for a resource is higher than the resource availability in the resource pool. Various methods that include reduction in the requested amount of resource, early release of the resources and taxing members have been studied, Based on comparisons of these methods along with the advantages and disadvantages of each model outlined, a hybrid method that only taxes members for unused resources is developed. All these methods have been studied through simulations

Juegos serios educativos como servicio: retos y desafíos

Cloud computing is a distributed computing technology that facilitates access to the resources in a dynamic, scalable and highly available manner. One of its service models is SaaS (Software as a Service) which allows executing Web applications in a flexible and elastic way while offering collaborative characteristics. The integration of SaaS in educational environments promotes academic performance and facilitates knowledge management, allowing for storage, exchange, access and synchronization of information. On the other hand, educational serious games promote among the people involved: collaboration, communication, social abilities, critical thinking and problem solving. The main objective of this investigation is to analyze the challenges that SaaS, with its collaborative and multitenancy characteristics present to the execution of educational serious games. This is named ESGaaS - Educational Serious Games as a Service. The analysis was developed based on a review of the existing literature through the methodology known as Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS) which facilitated the generation of investigation questions, search strategies, key words and inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to identify articles in several sources. This investigation facilitated the development of a list of functional characteristics that the educational serious games will acquire when used as software for service.La computación en la nube es una tecnología de computación distribuida que ofrece acceso a los recursos de manera dinámica, escalable y con alta disponibilidad. Uno de sus modelos de servicio, es el SaaS (Software as a Service) que permite ejecutar aplicaciones Web de manera flexible y elástica, además de ofrecer características colaborativas. La integración del SaaS en los entornos educativos potencia el rendimiento académico y facilita la gestión del conocimiento permitiendo almacenar, intercambiar, acceder y sincronizar información. Por su parte los juegos serios educativos potencian, entre los involucrados, la colaboración, comunicación, habilidades sociales, pensamiento crítico y resolución de problemas. El objetivo principal de esta investigación consistió en analizar los retos que SaaS, con sus características colaborativas y multiinquilino, ofrece a la ejecución de juegos serios educativos, lo cual denominamos ESGaaS – Juegos Serios Educativos como Servicio. El análisis fue realizado a partir de una revisión de literatura existente a través de la metodología denominada Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS) la cual permitió generar preguntas de investigación, estrategias de búsqueda, palabras claves y criterios de inclusión y exclusión que fueron aplicadas para localizar artículos en diversas fuentes. Como resultado del trabajo se elabora una lista de características funcionales que los juegos serios educativos adquirirían al ser utilizados como software como servicio.Facultad de Informátic