Towards a collaborative web-based learning system

The Internet can play an important role in providing education and new opportunities.The availability of the web-enabling technologies has influenced the success of e-learning strategies. The Internet may make the larger world more tangible and give strong foundation to extend traditional learning methods with dynamic learning using web technologies or electronically.E-learning consists of Web-based teaching tools that allow students and instructors access to course materials, assessment tools, activities and various communication options electronically.E-learning continues to work its way into the curriculum of many institutions of higher learning across the country.Focus of this paper is the discussion of the e-learning implementation, including future development and enhancement of e-learning.A review of the literature concerned the role of ICT in enhancing and promoting learning in or using the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) is also included.The e-learning platform used does provide a paradigm shift in facilitating student-lecturer interactio

Symmetric Synchronous Collaborative Navigation

Synchronous collaborative navigation is a form of social navigation where users virtually share a web browser. In this paper, we present a symmetric, proxy-based architecture where each user can take the lead and guide others in visiting web sites, without the need for a special browser or other software. We show how we have applied this scheme to a problem-solving-oriented e-learning system

A framework of web-based conceptual design

A web-based conceptual design prototype system is presented. The system consists of four parts which interpret on-line sketches as 2D and 3D geometry, extract 3D hierarchical configurations, allow editing of component behaviours, and produce VRML-based behavioural simulations for design verification and web-based application. In the first part, on-line freehand sketched input is interpreted as 2D and 3D geometry, which geometrically represents conceptual design. The system then infers 3D configuration by analysing 3D modelling history. The configuration is described by a parent–child hierarchical relationship and relative positions between two geometric components. The positioning information is computed with respect to the VRML97 specification. In order to verify the conceptual design of a product, the behaviours can be specified interactively on different components. Finally, the system creates VRML97 formatted files for behavioural simulation and collaborative design application over the Internet. The paper gives examples of web-based applications. This work forms a part of a research project into the design and establishing of modular machines for automation manufacture. A consortium of leading automotive companies is collaborating on the research project

Integration, management and communication of heterogeneous design resources with WWW technologies

Recently, advanced information technologies have opened new pos-sibilities for collaborative designs. In this paper, a Web-based collaborative de-sign environment is proposed, where heterogeneous design applications can be integrated with a common interface, managed dynamically for publishing and searching, and communicated with each other for integrated multi-objective de-sign. The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is employed as an implementation tool to enable integration and communication of design application programs; and the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used as a common data descriptive language for data exchange between heterogeneous applications and for resource description and recording. This paper also intro-duces the implementation of the system and the encapsulating issues of existing legacy applications. At last, an example of gear design based on the system is il-lustrated to identify the methods and procedure developed by this research

A Hybrid Web Recommendation System based on the Improved Association Rule Mining Algorithm

As the growing interest of web recommendation systems those are applied to deliver customized data for their users, we started working on this system. Generally the recommendation systems are divided into two major categories such as collaborative recommendation system and content based recommendation system. In case of collaborative recommen-dation systems, these try to seek out users who share same tastes that of given user as well as recommends the websites according to the liking given user. Whereas the content based recommendation systems tries to recommend web sites similar to those web sites the user has liked. In the recent research we found that the efficient technique based on asso-ciation rule mining algorithm is proposed in order to solve the problem of web page recommendation. Major problem of the same is that the web pages are given equal importance. Here the importance of pages changes according to the fre-quency of visiting the web page as well as amount of time user spends on that page. Also recommendation of newly added web pages or the pages those are not yet visited by users are not included in the recommendation set. To over-come this problem, we have used the web usage log in the adaptive association rule based web mining where the asso-ciation rules were applied to personalization. This algorithm was purely based on the Apriori data mining algorithm in order to generate the association rules. However this method also suffers from some unavoidable drawbacks. In this paper we are presenting and investigating the new approach based on weighted Association Rule Mining Algorithm and text mining. This is improved algorithm which adds semantic knowledge to the results, has more efficiency and hence gives better quality and performances as compared to existing approaches.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

FARS: Fuzzy Ant based Recommender System for Web Users

Recommender systems are useful tools which provide an adaptive web environment for web users. Nowadays, having a user friendly website is a big challenge in e-commerce technology. In this paper, applying the benefits of both collaborative and content based filtering techniques is proposed by presenting a fuzzy recommender system based on collaborative behavior of ants (FARS). FARS works in two phases: modeling and recommendation. First, user’s behaviors are modeled offline and the results are used in second phase for online recommendation. Fuzzy techniques provide the possibility of capturing uncertainty among user interests and ant based algorithms provides us with optimal solutions. The performance of FARS is evaluated using log files of “Information and Communication Technology Center” of Isfahan municipality in Iran and compared with ant based recommender system (ARS). The results shown are promising and proved that integrating fuzzy Ant approach provides us with more functional and robust recommendations

Usability dimensions in collaborative GIS

Collaborative GIS requires careful consideration of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability aspects, given the variety of users that are expected to use these systems, and the need to ensure that users will find the system effective, efficient, and enjoyable. The chapter explains the link between collaborative GIS and usability engineering/HCI studies. The integration of usability considerations into collaborative GIS is demonstrated in two case studies of Web-based GIS implementation. In the first, the process of digitising an area on Web-based GIS is improved to enhance the user's experience, and to allow interaction over narrowband Internet connections. In the second, server-side rendering of 3D scenes allows users who are not equipped with powerful computers to request sophisticated visualisation without the need to download complex software. The chapter concludes by emphasising the need to understand the users' context and conditions within any collaborative GIS project. © 2006, Idea Group Inc

The LIMS Community and its collaborative Livestock Information Management System for managing livestock statistics and sharing information in the SADC region (Southern African Development Community)

The paper aims at presenting some selected components of the SADC collaborative LIMS (Livestock Information Management System), particularly a wiki, a web mapping and a forum used in combination with other tools. The system experiments new ways for collating fragmented livestock statistics and sharing information in a region. It was developed in the context of the sector-wide integration of a regional economic community achievable through an improved institutional collaboration which LIMS shall foster. The initial problem stated that stakeholders of the region and in the sector were not sharing enough data or information, because of accessibility and interoperability problems, fragmentation of dataset lying under the responsibility of too many stakeholders, lack of standardization of contents, lack of a sharable virtual web space or due to sociological and institutional barriers. To overcome problems an hybrid information system was designed based on collaborative principles and components. The system is ruled by a few international standards on contents and exchange protocols. It is firstly based on an institutional alliance, the LIMS community, forming professional and somehow social networks organized at regional and national levels. This community is made of key stakeholders from countries and livestock commodity chains of the region who endeavour to share and disseminate information and knowledge in a common system. They already use a collaborative database developed with a view of better collating quantitative data which contents were standardized. Finally the system was broaden up by adding a series of new collaborative software's which have been grouped under a portal to achieve specific communication and information management functions. The portal (url: http://www.printlims.org ; wiki.printlims.org) uses a content management system (CMS EZpublish) and other WEB2.0-derived tools like WIKI manuals and documents, technical and thematic forums (Dgroups from CTA and phpBB) and a new interactive mapping tool (Geoclip©) to complement an already existing web mapping service. The LIMS system can be compared to similar initiatives like DEVinfo developed by the United Nations and CountrySTAT by FAO.(Résumé d'auteur