A Model for European e-Competence Framework

The paper describes a model of implementation of the European e-Competence Framework in Sofia University by using the methodology and tools developed in the frames of the EC Sixth Framework European Integrated Project Ten- Competence. The work is a follow up activity of an internal university project for implementation a curricula in computing based on the ACM/IEEE recommendations

Game-Based Learning Activities and Assignments

The Center for Innovation and Research in Computing (CIRC) is creating a web application that uses game-based learning to help students be engaged and collaborate, as an adventure-based quest. In this research project, the activity module was created for this web application. This module contains assignment creation, completion, and grading. These assignments can be included in the quests and courses. The seamless connection between the activity module and the course module was possible with the Yii framework

Using Camtasia To Create Video Tutorials: Students As Academic Partners Project Report.

The aim of this project was to create a series of online video tutorials for a Level 4 module (COMP1342 – Creative Computing). For various reasons, students may miss a seminar or prefer a different learning style than is presented during a specific Computing session. Thus, some students may benefit from having a series of online tutorials that present similar information presented in a specific seminar. Web links to the videos can be posted to Blackboard where students may view the online tutorials at their convenience. The project was led by a Computing tutor who supervised a Computing student who created six weeks of online video-based tutorials for the COMP1342 module. The tutorials were created with Camtasia, a software product which records both the computer screen activity and audio from the speaker. This can be especially valuable for creating tutorials of computer-based lessons. Results of the first four weeks where the content was available showed that an average of 21% of students did watch the video tutorials. Several students expressed the appreciation of having tutorials that they could watch at their convenience, especially if they did not fully understand the lesson presented in the regular class seminar

A direct method for teaching and measuring engineering professional skills for global workplace competency: Adaptations to computing at a University in the United Arab Emirates

© 2014 IEEE. The Engineering Professional Skills Assessment (EPSA) is the first and only direct method and measurement tool in the literature that can be used to teach and simultaneously measure the ABET non-technical skills for use at both course and program levels. The American Society for Engineering Education award-winning EPSA is a discussion-based performance activity designed to elicit students\u27 knowledge and application of engineering professional skills. A partnership with Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was formed in 2014 to adapt the EPSA to the field of computing, as well as to the UAE context. The final deliverable of the project will be the Computing Professional Skills Assessment, which will be made freely available to the computing and IT communities worldwide. This paper describes the initial stages of the project, the development of one scenario and two dimensions of the CPS Rubric

A Critique of Design Approaches for Notification Systems

The Fall 2004 Virginia Tech Undergraduate Research in Computer Science (VTURCS) class, taught by Dr. McCrickard, covered the following topics: problem, activity and information/interaction phases of design; scenario based design; interruption, reaction, and comprehension (IRC) values; stages of action; ubiquitous computing evaluation areas (UEAs) and participatory negotiation. This critique is my assessment and observations of how these design approaches worked for our project

When Lift-and-Project Cuts are Different

In this paper, we present a method to determine if a lift-and-project cut for a mixed-integer linear program is irregular, in which case the cut is not equivalent to any intersection cut from the bases of the linear relaxation. This is an important question due to the intense research activity for the past decade on cuts from multiple rows of simplex tableau as well as on lift-and-project cuts from non-split disjunctions. While it is known since Balas and Perregaard (2003) that lift-and-project cuts from split disjunctions are always equivalent to intersection cuts and consequently to such multi-row cuts, Balas and Kis (2016) have recently shown that there is a necessary and sufficient condition in the case of arbitrary disjunctions: a lift-and-project cut is regular if, and only if, it corresponds to a regular basic solution of the Cut Generating Linear Program (CGLP). This paper has four contributions. First, we state a result that simplifies the verification of regularity for basic CGLP solutions from Balas and Kis (2016). Second, we provide a mixed-integer formulation that checks whether there is a regular CGLP solution for a given cut that is regular in a broader sense, which also encompasses irregular cuts that are implied by the regular cut closure. Third, we describe a numerical procedure based on such formulation that identifies irregular lift-and-project cuts. Finally, we use this method to evaluate how often lift-and-project cuts from simple $t$-branch split disjunctions are irregular, and thus not equivalent to multi-row cuts, on 74 instances of the MIPLIB benchmarks.Comment: INFORMS Journal on Computing (to appear

Analyzing Power Consumption in Query Processing for Centralized Database System

Green computing is the environmentally responsible use of computers and related resources as well as reduced power resource consumption. In supporting to green computing, this project is being carried out with the main purpose to analyze the efficient performance of query processing activity in consuming power from a centralized database by implementing different query strategies in data grouping. In achieving the goal, each data query strategy retrieved from the database is measured based on its power consumption by using an energy saving power meter. A consolidated hotel management system is developed as to indicate the context of the project in testing on the query power usage from a centralized database system. This project emphasizes on the amount of power (in watts) that the query consumed based on the size of the query and the strategy used in assembling the data. It is more focusing on the simulation of query dataset in consuming power and not on developing a real-time system. Hence, the functionality and reliability of the system is not the main focus and will not be discussed in this paper work. By the end of this project, readers would be able to see and analyze that various query strategies applied in retrieving the same output under a specified condition gives dissimilar power reading which indicates the different amount of power consumption by each data query

A double-decomposition based parallel exact algorithm for the feedback length minimization problem

Product development projects usually contain many interrelated activities with complex information dependences, which induce activity rework, project delay and cost overrun. To reduce negative impacts, scheduling interrelated activities in an appropriate sequence is an important issue for project managers. This study develops a double-decomposition based parallel branch-and-prune algorithm, to determine the optimal activity sequence that minimizes the total feedback length (FLMP). This algorithm decomposes FLMP from two perspectives, which enables the use of all available computing resources to solve subproblems concurrently. In addition, we propose a result-compression strategy and a hash-address strategy to enhance this algorithm. Experimental results indicate that our algorithm can find the optimal sequence for FLMP up to 27 activities within 1 hour, and outperforms state of the art exact algorithms.Comment: This paper has been accepted by PeerJ Computer Science on August 28, 202

Applying Problem Based Learning educational method for improving Human-tech competencies in Computer Engineering students: a research proposal

This paper resumes the background theory of the likewise entitled research project. The project aims to give a contribution to software programming quality improving “Human-tech” competencies in Computer Engineering students as a means to prevent, or at least avoid in a great extend, the rate of unsuccessful software implementation projects. We are specially interested in researching what Human Factors competencies must be profiled in Computing Curricula outcomes that may contribute to better prepare students as “Human-tech” experts. We will apply Problem Based Learning educational method for delivering those competencies to students. We believe it is possible to do better than what as been done, to have a better degree of adequacy between the Human user and the software he uses for his/her activity. All background theory that support the axiomatic principles of this research project is explained in the first section. Then the project is outlined as well as its plan and expected outcomes and contribution in the following sections

NetJobs: A new approach to network monitoring for the Grid using Grid jobs

With grid computing, the far-fl�ung and disparate IT resources act as a single "virtual datacenter". Grid computing interfaces heterogeneous IT resources so they are available when and where we need them. Grid allows us to provision applications and allocate capacity among research and business groups that are geographically and organizationally dispersed. Building a high availability Grid is hold as the next goal to achieve: protecting against computer failures and site failures to avoid downtime of resource and honor Service Level Agreements. Network monitoring has a key role in this challenge. This work is concerning the design and the prototypal implementation of a new approach to Network monitoring for the Grid based on the usage of Grid scheduled jobs. This work was carried out within the Network Support task (SA2) of the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project. This thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 1: Grid Computing From the origins of Grid Computing to the latest projects. Conceptual framework and main features characterizing many kind of popular grids will be presented. Chapter 2: The EGEE and EGI projects This chapter describes the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project and the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). EGEE project (2004-2010) was the�flagship Grid infrastructure project of the EU. The third and last two-year phase of the project (started on 1 May 2008) was financed with a total budget of around 47 million euro, with a further estimated 50 million euro worth of computing resources contributed by the partners. A total manpower of 9,000 Person Months, of which over 4,500 Person Months has been contributed by the partners from their own funding sources. At its close, EGEE represented a worldwide infrastructure of approximately to 200,000 CPU cores, collaboratively hosted by more than 300 centres around the world. By the end of the project, around 13 million jobs were executed on the EGEE grid each month. The new organization, EGI.eu, has then been created to continue the coordination and evolution of the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) based on EGEE Grid. Chapter3: gLite Middleware Chapter three gives an overview on the gLite Grid Middleware. gLite is the middleware stack for grid computing used by the EGEE and EGI projects with in a very large variety of scientifi�c domains. Born from the collaborative efforts of more than 80 people in 12 different academic and industrial research centers as part of the EGEE Project, gLite provides a complete set of services for building a production grid infrastructure. gLite provides a framework for building grid applications tapping into the power of distributed computing and storage resources across the Internet. The gLite services are currently adopted by more than 250 Computing Centres and used by more than 15000 researchers in Europe and around the world. Chapter 4: Network Activity in EGEE/EGI Grid infrastructures are distributed by nature, involving many sites, normally in different administrative domains. Individual sites are connected together by a network, which is therefore a critical part of the whole Grid infrastructure; without the network there is no Grid. Monitoring is a key component for the successful operation of any infrastructure, helping in the discovery and diagnosis of any problem which may arise. Network monitoring is able to contribute to the day-to-day operations of the Grid by helping to provide answers to specific questions from users and site administrators. This chapter will discuss all the effort lavished by EGEE and EGI in the Grid Network domain. Chapter 5: Grid Network Monitoring based on Grid Jobs Net Jobs is a prototype of a light weight solution for the Grid network monitoring. A job-based approach has been used in order to prove the feasibility of this non intrusive solution. It is currently configured to monitor eight production sites spread from Italy to France but this method could be applied to the vast majority of Grid sites. The prototype provides coherent RTT, MTU, number of hops and TCP achievable bandwidth tests