Extending the design process into the knowledge of the world

Research initiatives throughout history have shown how a designer typically makes associations and references to a vast amount of knowledge based on experiences to make decisions. With the increasing usage of information systems in our everyday lives, one might imagine an information system that provides designers access to the ‘architectural memories’ of other architectural designers during the design process, in addition to their own physical architectural memory. In this paper, we discuss how the increased adoption of semantic web technologies might advance this idea. We briefly discuss how such a semantic web of building information can be set up, and how this can be linked to a wealth of information freely available in the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud

Increasing information feed in the process of structural steel design

Research initiatives throughout history have shown how a designer typically makes associations and references to a vast amount of knowledge based on experiences to make decisions. With the increasing usage of information systems in our everyday lives, one might imagine an information system that provides designers access to the ‘architectural memories’ of other architectural designers during the design process, in addition to their own physical architectural memory. In this paper, we discuss how the increased adoption of semantic web technologies might advance this idea. We investigate to what extent information can be described with these technologies in the context of structural steel design. This investigation indicates significant possibilities regarding information reuse in the process of structural steel design and, by extent, in other design contexts as well. However, important obstacles and question remarks can still be outlined as well

Integrating serious games in adaptive hypermedia applications for personalised learning experiences

Game-based approaches to learning are increasingly recognized for their potential to stimulate intrinsic motivation amongst learners. While a range of examples of effective serious games exist, creating high-fidelity content with which to populate games is resource-intensive task. To reduce this resource requirement, research is increasingly exploring means to reuse and repurpose existing games. Education has proven a popular application area for Adaptive Hypermedia (AH), as adaptation can offer enriched learning experiences. Whilst content has mainly been in the form of rich text, various efforts have been made to integrate serious games into AH. However, there is little in the way of effective integrated authoring and user modeling support. This paper explores avenues for effectively integrating serious games into AH. In particular, we consider authoring and user modeling aspects in addition to integration into run-time adaptation engines, thereby enabling authors to create AH that includes an adaptive game, thus going beyond mere selection of a suitable game and towards an approach with the capability to adapt and respond to the needs of learners and educators

Learning on demand: dynamic creation of customized, coherent eLearning experiences

This paper presents a conceptual model concerning automatic creation of coherent eLearning experiences through dynamic aggregation of heterogeneous learning objects. The model uses detailed user profiles as the main key to create customized learning content, tailored to each user’s needs, preferences and skills. Aggregation of heterogeneous learning objects may result in a very incoherent learning sequence. Therefore, the model incorporates a method to improve the learning coherence of the generated course. The compromise between customization and coherence is fully adjustable from maximum coherence to maximum customization

The Simple Publishing Interface (SPI)

Ternier, S., Massart, D., Totschnig, M., Klerkx, J., & Duval, E. (2010). The Simple Publishing Interface (SPI). D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2010, Volume 16 Number 9/10, doi:10.1045/september2010-ternierThe Simple Publishing Interface (SPI) is a new publishing protocol, developed under the auspices of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) workshop on learning technologies. This protocol aims to facilitate the communication between content producing tools and repositories that persistently manage learning resources and metadata. The SPI work focuses on two problems: (1) facilitating the metadata and resource publication process (publication in this context refers to the ability to ingest metadata and resources); and (2) enabling interoperability between various components in a federation of repositories. This article discusses the different contexts where a protocol for publishing resources is relevant. SPI contains an abstract domain model and presents several methods that a repository can support. An Atom Publishing Protocol binding is proposed that allows for implementing SPI with a concrete technology and enables interoperability between applications.European Committee for Standardization (CEN), CEN/Expert/2009/3

Developing Engineering Learning Objects Online Portal with LabVIEW and an Open Source Web Content Management System

Learning objects (LOs) are independent chunks of knowledge normally used for instructional or learning purposes. LOs are normally reusable in the sense that they can be adopted and adapted for various learning and instructional scenarios. They are also tagged with metadata which includes descriptive information allowing them to be used and searched easily. LOs are sometimes metaphored as being a LEGO. Examples of LOs could contain multimedia content, instructional content, learning objectives, instructional software and software tools, and computer simulations. Many LOs are designed to be mediated online. In engineering education, computer simulations based learning objects could be the most beneficial for conveying hard engineering concepts for the engineering science learner. Computer simulations have been reported to facilitate conceptual understanding and leaving positive impact on students learning in numerous number of engineering education research articles. In the last two decades, many software packages have been developed for enhancing the engineering design and analysis process, examples are Matlab/Simulink, PSpice, LabVIEW, etc. These has been used consequently by academics for enhancing their students learning. LabVIEW is one of the most versatile computer software packages. It is used comprehensively in the industry as well as in academia. LabVIEW started as computer software interface of PC based data question equipments, however, it has grown much beyond that offering comprehensive toolkits and already implemented functions. Also it has great connectivity facilities with Matlab/Simulink, C++, and Visual Basic allowing communicating already developed codes in the latter with its core engine. The other important specification of LabVIEW is its embedded internet tools enabling publishing its programmed GUIs on the world wide web in easy and handy way. Web content management systems is the third generation of web publishing applications after HTML and web authoring software packages such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A WCMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential Web maintenance functions. In contrast with the web development tools such as HTML, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc., a CMS enables faster development, cost effectiveness, and online flexibility. The basic idea of any web content management system is that a non-technical person often needs to be able to keep their own website up-to-date without having to call on a web developer to make changes every time. Of course there are some things that can only be done by a web developer, but for simpler tasks such as changing the wording of a paragraph, it is an unnecessary burden and expense for both parties if you have to get a developer to make the changes. This paper provides an A to Z prescription of implementing a standardized Learning Objects online portal. This describing in detail a LabVIEW based Learning Object architecture, using a proper IEEE LOM metadata generation tool, and finally how on the top of that a Joomla web content management system can be used for developing the online portal

Osservazioni sul paradigma dei learning object

No abstract availabl