KnowledgePuzzle: a browsing tool to adapt the web navigation process to the learner's mental model

This article presents KnowledgePuzzle, a browsing tool for knowledge construction from the web. It aims to adapt the structure of web content to the learner’s information needs regardless of how the web content is originally delivered. Learners are provided with a meta-cognitive space (eg, a concept mapping tool) that enables them to plan navigation paths and visualize the semantic processing of knowledge in their minds. Once the learner’s viewpoint becomes visually represented, it will be transformed to a layer of informative hyperlinks and annotations over previously visited pages. The attached layer causes the web content to be explicitly structured to accommodate the learner’s interests by interlinking and annotating chunks of information that make up the learner’s knowledge. Finally, a hypertext version of the whole knowledge is generated to enable fast and easy reviewing. A discussion about the

AR2SPARQL: An Arabic Natural Language Interface for the Semantic Web

With the growing interest in supporting the Arabic language on the Semantic Web (SW), there is an emerging need to enable Arab users to query ontologies and RDF stores without being challenged with the formal logic of the SW. In the domain of English language, several efforts provided Natural Language (NL) interfaces to enable ordinary users to query ontologies using NL queries. However, none of these efforts were designed to support the Arabic language which has different morphological and semantic structures. As a step towards supporting Arabic Question Answering (QA) on the SW, this work presents AR2SPARQL, a NL interface that takes questions expressed in Arabic and returns answers drawn from an ontology-based knowledge base. The core of AR2SPARQL is the approach we propose to translate Arabic questions into triples which are matched against RDF data to retrieve an answer. The system uses both linguistic and semantic features to resolve ambiguity when matching words to the ontology content. To overcome the limited support for Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP), the system does not make intensive use of sophisticated linguistic methods. Instead, it relies more on the knowledge defined in the ontology and the grammar rules we define to capture the structures of Arabic questions and to construct an adequate RDF representations. AR2SPARQL has been tested with two different datasets and results have shown that it achieves a good retrieval performance in terms of precision and recall

Towards a teacher-centric approach for multi-touch surfaces in classrooms

The potential of tabletops to enable simultaneous interaction and face-to-face collaboration can provide novel learning opportunities. Despite significant research in the area of collaborative learning around tabletops, little attention has been paid to the integration of multi-touch surfaces into classroom layouts and how to employ this technology to facilitate teacher-learner dialogue and teacher-led activities across multi-touch surfaces. While most existing techniques focus on the collaboration between learners, this work aims to gain a better understanding of practical challenges that need to be considered when integrating multi-touch surfaces into classrooms. It presents a multi-touch interaction technique, called TablePortal, which enables teachers to manage and monitor collaborative learning on students' tables. Early observations of using the proposed technique within a novel classroom consisting of networked

Leveraging semantic web technologies to enhance individual and collaborative learning

Despite the popularity of the World Wide Web as a resource of hypertext-based learning materials, web-based learning is often associated with many challenges. One of these challenge is the ability to find learning material that can best match the user interests with minimal effort. This paper presents SWLinker, a distributed system that leverages ontological engineering to enable users to access complementary and in-depth knowledge resources through a standard Web browser. The proposed approach supports real-time interpretation of any web pages existing on the Internet by attaching semantic layers of knowledge chunks. It also enables learners to discover domain terms in a wider context by embedding portals that offer a grand vision of all instructionally-related concepts and sub topics. Learners are still able to query knowledge bases and associate knowledge with what they are currently browsing but

تقييم ممارسات الوصول المفتوح وإدارة البيانات البحثية والخدمات ذات العلاقات في مؤسسات التعليم العالي الفلسطينية

This report presents the findings of a needs assessment survey that was carried out with researchers and academic staff in four Palestinian Higher Education Institutions (PS HEIs) between December 2016 and February 2017. The four participating institutions include: ●The Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) ●Al-Quds Open University (QOU) ●Birzeit University (BZU) ●Palestine Technical University-Kadoori (KADهذا التقرير يستعرض نتائج دراسة الاحتياجات التي تم إجراؤها مع الباحثين والأكاديمين في أربع جامعات فلسطينية ما بين ديسيمبر 2016 و فبراير 2017 لتقييم تجربتهم في مجال الوصول المفتوح وإدارة البيانات البحثية. الجامعات المشاركة في الدراسة: - الجامعة الإسلامية - جامعة بيرزيت - جامعة القدس المفتوحة - جامعة خضور

An Efficient Approach For Semantically-Enhanced Document Clustering By Using Wikipedia Link Structure

Traditional techniques of document clustering do not consider the semantic relationships between words when assigning documents to clusters. For instance, if two documents talking about the same topic do that using different words (which may be synonyms or semantically associated), these techniques may assign documents to different clusters. Previous research has approached this problem by enriching the document representation with the background knowledge in an ontology. This paper presents a new approach to enhance document clustering by exploiting the semantic knowledge contained in Wikipedia. We first map terms within documents to their corresponding Wikipedia concepts. Then, similarity between each pair of terms is calculated by using the Wikipedia's link structure. The document’s vector representation is then adjusted so that terms that are semantically related gain more weight. Our approach differs from related efforts in two aspects: first, unlink others who built their own methods of measuring similarity through the Wikipedia categories; our approach uses a similarity measure that is modelled after the Normalized Google Distance which is a well-known and low-cost method of measuring term similarity. Second, it is more time efficient as it applies an algorithm for phrase extraction from documents prior to matching terms with Wikipedia. Our approach was evaluated by being compared with different methods from the state of the art on two different datasets. Empirical results showed that our approach improved the clustering results as compared to other approaches

Investigating the Efficiency of WordNet as Background Knowledge for Document Clustering

Traditional techniques of document clustering do not consider the semantic relationships between words when assigning documents to clusters. For instance, if two documents talk about the same topic but by using different words, these techniques may assign documents to different clusters. Many efforts have approached this problem by enriching the document’s representation with background knowledge from WordNet. These efforts, however, often showed conflicting results: While some researches claimed that WordNet had the potential to improve the clustering performance by its capability to capture and estimate similarities between words, other researches claimed that WordNet provided little or no enhancement to the obtained clusters. This work aims to experimentally resolve this contradiction between the two teams, and explain why WordNet could be useful in some cases while not in others, and what factors can influence the use of WordNet for document clustering. We conducted a set of experiments in which WordNet was used for document clustering with various settings including different datasets, different ways of incorporating semantics into the document’s representation and different similarity measures. Results showed that different experimental settings may yield different clusters: For example, the influence of WordNet’s semantic features varies according to the dataset being used. Results also revealed that WordNet-based similarity measures do not seem to improve clustering, and that there was no certain measure to ensure the best clustering results

تقييم إدارة المخرجات البحثية في إدارات مؤسسات التعليم العالي الفلسطينية

This report presents the findings of a needs assessment survey that was carried out with research managers in four Palestinian Higher Education Institutions (PS HEIs) between December 2016 and February 2017. The four participating institutions include: The Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) Al-Quds Open University (QOU) Birzeit University (BZU) Palestine Technical University-Kadoori (KAD) The survey data will be used to: Identify the size, formats and scopes of research volumes and digital holdings for which each partner PS HEI assumes preservation responsibility. Review the current RDM practices and activities adopted at the institutional level. Review the current situation in PS HEIs as regards IRs, open access publishing and institutional support for RDM. Determine the current shortcomings and future priorities in RDM from the institution's perspective. In general, this survey targeted the administration and management staff who were responsible for, or directly involved, in RDM in the four partner PS HEIs. Since partner PS Universities might have different organizational structures and administrative departments, the selection process of participants from each university could not be the same. Project coordinators at partner PS Universities were asked to choose eligible persons based on the university's structure and pertinent administrative positions. They were urged to select participants from department/units/centres that were in charge of RDM activities such as scientific research, University library, IT unit, etc.يعرض هذا التقرير نتائج مسح تقييم الاحتياجات الذي تم إجراؤه مع مديري البحوث في أربع مؤسسات تعليم عالي فلسطينية بين ديسمبر 2016 وفبراير 2017. تشمل المؤسسات الأربع المشاركة ما يلي: الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة جامعة القدس المفتوحة جامعة بيرزيت جامعة فلسطين التقنية - خضدوري سيتم استخدام بيانات المسح من أجل: - تحديد حجم وتنسيقات ونطاق وحدات البحث والمقتنيات الرقمية التي يتحمل كل شريك مسؤولية الحفاظ عليها. - مراجعة ممارسات إدارة مخرجات البحث العلمي الحالية والأنشطة المعتمدة على المستوى المؤسسي. - مراجعة الوضع الحالي في مؤسسات التعليم العالي في فلسطين فيما يتعلق بالـمستودعات المؤسسية ونشر الوصول المفتوح والدعم المؤسسي لـإدارة المخرجات البحثية - تحديد أوجه القصور الحالية والأولويات المستقبلية في مجال إدارة المخرجات البحثية من وجهة نظر المؤسسة. بشكل عام ، استهدف هذا المسح موظفي الإدارة الذين كانوا مسؤولين أو مشاركين بشكل مباشر في إدارة مخرجات البحث العلكي في مؤسسات التعليم العالي الشريكة الأربعة. نظرًا لأن الجامعات الشريكة قد يكون لها هياكل تنظيمية وإدارات إدارية مختلفة ، فإن عملية اختيار المشاركين من كل جامعة لا يمكن أن تكون هي نفسها. طُلب من منسقي المشروع في الجامعات الشريكة اختيار الأشخاص المؤهلين بناءً على هيكل الجامعة والوظائف الإدارية ذات الصلة. تم حثهم على اختيار المشاركين من القسم / الوحدات / المراكز التي كانت مسؤولة عن أنشطة إدارة مخرجات البحث العلمي مثل البحث العلمي ، مكتبة الجامعة ، وحدة تكنولوجيا المعلومات ، إلخ

An Exploratory Study of 3D Interaction Techniques in Augmented Reality Environments.

Augmented Reality (AR) interfaces typically involve the overlay of virtual imagery onto the real world. 3D interaction with the virtual scene is a key feature to explore the full potential of AR. Despite the large number of interaction techniques that have been proposed to enable for intuitive 3D interaction in AR environments, little effort has been done to compare these techniques. In addition, many techniques have been arbitrarily used without formative evaluation or without considering the requirements of different AR applications. This paper discusses three interaction techniques with 3D content in AR environments and reports on an experiment that we conducted to compare them. These techniques are: 1) manipulation of hand-held fiducial markers, 2) free hand interaction, and 3) a keypad controller. 18 participants were recruited and asked to perform a series of tasks which involved the manipulation of a 3D object. The study sheds the light on the strengths and limitations of the studied techniques and when it is appropriate to use each of them. We believe that the reported results will help inform the design and customization of 3D interaction techniques for AR applications

System for people with hearing impairment to solve their social integration

The deaf have the right to live a fair life and do their tasks without any difficulty exactly like everyone else. There are 360 million people (328 million adults and 32 million children) worldwide who have disabling hearing loss (Over 5% of the world's population) (WHO, 2015). Disabling hearing loss refers to hearing loss greater than 40 decibels (dB) in the better hearing ear in adults and a hearing loss greater than 30 dB in the better hearing ear in children(WHO, 2015). The majority of people with disabling hearing loss live in low- and middle-income countries (WHO, 2015). This work presents a mobile application that aims to make the communication between the deaf and other people easy, thus helping them to be more productive and better integrated into their communities