E-learning systems in higher education institutions: An outlook of their use in the Western Balkan Region

This study provides a review of the literature on e-learning systems evolution and environments. The argument is that e-learning systems should be embedded in the core strategy of the institution. To support this premise, studies for e-learning are analyzed and six recommendations are drawn for universities to follow in order to have successful e-learning environments. The main contribution of this study, however, is the identification of the trends and statistics regarding the e-learning usage in the Balkan region. These stats are identified through a survey conducted in 40 universities in 10 countries from this region. The results show that more than 70% of the universities have adopted LMS, which does not fall short behind when compared with universities in the world. Also, the results show that around 64% of the private universities develop LMS in-house, compared with around 38% of the public universities, which have funding from the governments and can purchase vendor based solutions. However, the results from the survey suggest that public universities in these countries are more prone to open-source rather than vendor based

E-learning systems in higher education institutions: An outlook of their use in the Western Balkan Region

This study provides a review of the literature on e-learning systems evolution and environments. The argument is that e-learning systems should be embedded in the core strategy of the institution. To support this premise, studies for e-learning are analyzed and six recommendations are drawn for universities to follow in order to have successful e-learning environments. The main contribution of this study, however, is the identification of the trends and statistics regarding the e-learning usage in the Balkan region. These stats are identified through a survey conducted in 40 universities in 10 countries from this region. The results show that more than 70% of the universities have adopted LMS, which does not fall short behind when compared with universities in the world. Also, the results show that around 64% of the private universities develop LMS in-house, compared with around 38% of the public universities, which have funding from the governments and can purchase vendor based solutions. However, the results from the survey suggest that public universities in these countries are more prone to open-source rather than vendor based

Identifying Causal Structures from Cyberstalking: Behaviors Severity and Association

This paper presents an etiological cyberstalking study, meaning the use of various technologies and internet in general to harass or to stalk someone. The novelty of the paper is the multivariate empirical approach of cyberstalking victimization that has received less attention from the research community. Also, there is a lack of such studies from the causal perspective. It happens, since in most of the studies, a priority is given on a single causation identification, whereas the data examination used for mining causal relationships in this paper presents a novel and great potential to detect combined or multiple cause factors. The paper focuses in the impact that variables such as age, gender and the fact whether the participant has ever harassed someone, is related to the fact of being victim of cyberstalking. The research aims to find the causes of cyberstalking in high school’s teenagers. Furthermore, an exploratory data analysis has been performed. A weak and moderate correlation between the factors on the dataset is emphasized. The odds ratio among the variables has been calculated, which implies that girls are twice as likely as boys to be cyberstalked. Similarly, concerning outcomes related to cyberstalking frequency recidivism are noticed

IoTSAS: An Integrated System for Real-Time Semantic Annotation and Interpretation of IoT Sensor Stream Data

Sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are increasingly finding application in various fields, such as air quality monitoring, weather alerts monitoring, water quality monitoring, healthcare monitoring, etc. IoT sensors continuously generate large volumes of observed stream data; therefore, processing requires a special approach. Extracting the contextual information essential for situational knowledge from sensor stream data is very difficult, especially when processing and interpretation of these data are required in real time. This paper focuses on processing and interpreting sensor stream data in real time by integrating different semantic annotations. In this context, a system named IoT Semantic Annotations System (IoTSAS) is developed. Furthermore, the performance of the IoTSAS System is presented by testing air quality and weather alerts monitoring IoT domains by extending the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and the Sensor Observations Service (SOS) standards, respectively. The developed system provides information in real time to citizens about the health implications from air pollution and weather conditions, e.g., blizzard, flurry, etc

Measuring e-Government Maturity: A meta-synthesis approach

Many governments in the world have created e-government initiatives including developed and developing countries. In order to better understand e-government evolution, different maturity models have been developed by many authors. In this paper the most cited e-government maturity models are analyzed using the meta-synthesis approach. As a result, five stages of e-government maturity are identified. The comparative results show the supported stages by each e-government initiative as important elements in the decision making process. This paper is attempting to show that although there are many models for measuring e-government maturity, they all converge on one common model. The contribution of this paper is in simplifying work for researchers when choosing the right maturity model