JobIQ : recommending study pathways based on career choices

Modern job markets often require an intricate combination of multi-disciplinary skills or specialist and technical knowledge, even for entry-level positions. Such requirements pose increased pressure on higher education graduates entering the job market. This paper presents our JobIQ recommendation system helping prospective students choose educational programs or electives based on their career preferences. While existing recommendation solutions focus on internal institutional data, such as previous student experiences, JobIQ considers external data, recommending educational programs that best cover the knowledge and skills required by selected job roles. To deliver such recommendations, we create and compare skill profiles from job advertisements and educational subjects, aggregating them to skill profiles of job roles and educational programs. Using skill profiles, we build formal models and algorithms for program recommendations. Finally, we suggest other recommendations and benchmarking approaches, helping curriculum developers assess the job readiness of program graduates. The video presenting the JobIQ system is available online∗

Teaching programming fundamentals to modern university students

In this paper we investigate how teaching programming to the modern generation of students, “digital natives” who grew up with Google and Facebook and do not know the world before the Internet, can be improved through a highly visual game-like approach. Many programming teachers report that modern programming students have short attention span, lack concentration and have poor motivation to learn programming. We show how we were able to improve the motivation of students and their marks by changing the study program so that the entire entry-level programming course (Programming Fundamentals) is being taught using a visual set of in-class examples and assignments. The paper presents a set of successful teaching patterns that helped to convert one of the most hated subjects in our school into a subject that many students loved and were able to master. The corresponding statistics suggests that one of the key achievements of our approach is a dramatic change in students’ motivation to learn programming, which has resulted a significant improvement in their overall results and was noticeable in the follow-up subjects

Simulating complex social behaviours of virtual agents through case-based planning

In commercial video games and simulations, non-player characters are capable of quite complex behaviour. Very often though, each class of non-player characters (that we further call virtual agents) is manually programmed or scripted. This means that instead of possessing some level of intelligence, allowing the agent to decide dynamically on the actions it needs to perform, we supply the agent with a list of possible situations that may arise in the game. For each such situation, we give the agent a pre-programmed script that tells it how to behave. Producing such scripts for every role an agent might play in a game or simulation is a very costly exercise. This may be acceptable in commercial game development, where budgets for modern games are sometimes comparable to budgets of Hollywood movies, but not adequate for research simulations and indie games. In this paper, we discuss how indie games and research simulations can be enriched with the sophisticated social behaviour of virtual agents in a semi-automatic manner through the use of AI planning. By supplying agents with roles and developing a computational model of their needs, we can use AI planning (also known as dynamic planning) to increase the complexity of agent behaviour dramatically and at the same time achieve a high degree of automation and reduce the development costs. AI planning is gaining popularity in games development, but it is often discarded due to performance issues. We will show how to improve the performance of planning process through the use of dynamic institutions and case-based planning. We will illustrate the aforementioned ideas on an example of developing a Virtual Reality simulation of everyday life in Ancient Mesopotamia

A shape grammar interpreter for rectilinear forms

Shape grammars play an important role in a new generation of tools for the analysis and design of products. Up until now there has been numerous attempts to create a general shape grammar interpreter, but most of the existing tools are either very specific in their purpose, have only limited functionality or were programmed for one operating system. In this work, we present a tool named Shape Grammar Interpreter (SGI) for the automatic generation of designs. The developed shape grammar framework allows designers to automatically synthetize designs and to actively participate in the generation process. Great effort has been devoted to provide an interactive way of defining shapes and later using them in shape grammar rules and designs’ generation process. The tool implements two different types of algorithms for the generation of designs. First, Tree-search algorithms which store the state of the generation process in a tree structure and uses traditional tree-search algorithms to find the next rule to apply. Second, and most importantly, an optimized subshape detection algorithm. Hence, subshapes of the existing shapes can be detected and used in the generation process obtaining not only a wider set of designs but potentially more appealing ones. In this paper, we also describe the architecture of the framework and provide a performance evaluation of proposed algorithms, showing a significant gain in performance. Potential applications of our research can be found in the educational field (i.e. architecture and arts) and in the automatic generation of architectural, mechanical and product designs

General Shape Grammar Interpreter for Intelligent Designs Generations

Shape grammars play an important role in a new generation of tools for the analysis and design of products. In this work we present a general tool named shape grammar interpreter (SGI) for the automatic generation of designs. The developed shape grammar framework allows designers to obtain automatically generated designs and to participate in the design process. In that way the generated design complies with both the desired functionality and an attractive aspect. Great effort has been devoted on having a comfortable way of defining shapes and later using them in shape grammar rules and designs' generation process. We have also implemented and incorporated in the tool an optimized subshape detection algorithm. Hence, subshapes of the existing shapes can be detected in the generation process obtaining more appealing designs

Generating needs, goals and plans for virtual agents in social simulations

Many modern virtual reality reconstructions of historical sites focus on buildings and artefacts, but often ignore the issue of portraying everyday life of the people who populated the reconstructed area. This is mainly due to high costs and complexity of populating such sites with virtual agents. Here we show how combining needs modelling and planning can help to automate the development of large agent societies

Virtual world grammar

Organization-based multi-agent systems (MAS) can be represented by means of 3D virtual worlds facilitating then the interaction among participants, i.e humans and agents. In this paper we propose a system that can automatically generate a 3D virtual world from formal specifications of both a MAS and a design visual style (i.e a shape grammar). We propose an extension of shape grammars in combination with virtual world paradigms, called Virtual World Grammar (VWG), to support the design generation process. Virtual World Grammar includes semantic information about both MAS specification which establishes the activities participants can engage on and shape grammar elements. This information, along with heuristics and validations, guides the generation process and allows us to produce functional designs. The Virtual World Builder Toolkit, integrated in our Shape Grammar Interpreter tool, supports both the definition and execution of the Virtual World Grammar

Learning Java Programming in Clara's World

The book introduces the key concepts of Java programming through the eyes of a small ladybug called Clara. Clara is a fun and extremely obedient insect, whose journey starts with limited skills. Readers learn programming by making Clara move around and manipulate objects in her world. As the book progresses, Clara becomes more intelligent and acquires new skills and (together with readers) learns by tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges. The book explains programming concepts through real-world problems such as launching rockets into space, automatically patching potholes, developing a vacuum cleaner robot, simulating projectile motion, dynamically avoiding obstacles, delivering mail, etc. Every chapter of the book starts by presenting a challenge and then continues to explain new programming concepts with the focus on tackling this challenge. Focusing the new material explanation on these challenges helps to remind the readers of how this material is connected with the problems that they may encounter in the real world and makes it easier to relate to. You can explore all programming challenges presented in this book on the Clara’s World website. Every programming problem covered in the book has a corresponding link to a problem template (for those readers willing to attempt the problem themselves), the link to the solution of this problem and a video recording of us solving this problem step-by-step. In addition, at the end of each chapter there is a link to fun exercises that readers are recommended to complet

VIXEE an innovative communication infrastructure for virtual institutions

Virtual Institutions (VI) provide many interesting possibilities for social virtual environments, collaborative spaces and simulation environments. VIs combine Electronic Institutions and 3D Virtual Worlds. While Electronic Institutions are used to establish the regulations which structure participants interactions, Virtual Worlds are used to facilitate human participation. In this paper we propose Virtual Institution Execution Environment (VIXEE) as an innovative communication infrastructure for Virtual Institutions. Main features of the infrastructure are i) the causal connection between Virtual World and Electronic Institutions layers, ii) the automatic generation and update of VIs 3D visualization and iii) the simultaneous participation of users from different Virtual World platforms

A virtual world grammar for automatic generation of virtual worlds

Hybrid systems such as those that combine 3D virtual worlds and organization based multiagent systems add new visual and communication features for multiuser applications. The design of such hybrid and dynamic systems is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a system that can automatically generate a 3D virtual world (VW) from an organization based multiagent system (MAS) specification that establishes the activities participants can engage on. Both shape grammar and virtual world paradigms inspired us to propose a Virtual World Grammar (VWG) to support the generation process of a virtual world design. A VWG includes semantic information about both MAS specification and shape grammar elements. This information, along with heuristics and validations, guides the VW generation producing functional designs. To support the definition and execution of a Virtual World Grammar, we have developed a so named Virtual World Builder Toolkit (VWBT). We illustrate this process by generating a 3D visualization of a virtual institution from its specification