On the use of case-based planning for e-learning personalization

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Expert Systems with Applications. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Expert Systems with Applications, 60, 1-15, 2016. DOI:10.1016/j.eswa.2016.04.030In this paper we propose myPTutor, a general and effective approach which uses AI planning techniques to create fully tailored learning routes, as sequences of Learning Objects (LOs) that fit the pedagogical and students’ requirements. myPTutor has a potential applicability to support e-learning personalization by producing, and automatically solving, a planning model from (and to) e-learning standards in a vast number of real scenarios, from small to medium/large e-learning communities. Our experiments demonstrate that we can solve scenarios with large courses and a high number of students. Therefore, it is perfectly valid for schools, high schools and universities, especially if they already use Moodle, on top of which we have implemented myPTutor. It is also of practical significance for repairing unexpected discrepancies (while the students are executing their learning routes) by using a Case-Based Planning adaptation process that reduces the differences between the original and the new route, thus enhancing the learning process. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work has been partially funded by the Consolider AT project CSD2007-0022 INGENIO 2010 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the MICINN project TIN2011-27652-C03-01, the MINECO and FEDER project TIN2014-55637-C2-2-R, the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology, the Valencian Prometeo project II/2013/019 and the BW5053 research project of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.Garrido Tejero, A.; Morales, L.; Serina, I. (2016). On the use of case-based planning for e-learning personalization. Expert Systems with Applications. 60:1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2016.04.030S1156

STM 2020 : security and trust management

Android accessibility features include a robust set of tools allowing developers to create apps for assisting people with disabilities. Unfortunately, this useful set of tools can also be abused and turned into an attack vector, providing malware with the ability to interact and read content from third-party apps. In this work, we are the first to study the impact that the stealthy exploitation of Android accessibility services can have on significantly reducing the forensic footprint of malware attacks, thus hindering both live and post-incident forensic investigations. We show that through Living off the Land (LotL) tactics, or by offering a malware-only substitute for attacks typically requiring more elaborate schemes, accessibilitybased malware can be rendered virtually undetectable. In the LotL approach, we demonstrate accessibility-enabled SMS and command and control (C2) capabilities. As for the latter, we show a complete cryptocurrency wallet theft, whereby the accessibility trojan can hijack the entire withdrawal process of a widely used app, including two-factor authentication (2FA). In both cases, we demonstrate how the attacks result in significantly diminished forensic evidence when compared to similar attacks not employing accessibility tools, even to the extent of maintaining device take-over without requiring malware persistence.peer-reviewe

Emotional intelligence in object oriented multimodal user interfaces for mobile learning and e-learning

Το πεδίο της κινητής τεχνολογίας λογισμικού αποτελεί σημαντικό ερευνητικό στόχο της διατριβής, με βασική επικέντρωση στην παροχή εκπαιδευτικού λογισμικού και συγγραφικών εργαλείων για εκπαιδευτές. Το προκύπτον σύστημα «Mobile Tutor» ενσωματώνει μηχανισμούς συλλογιστικής σε σχέση με τους χρήστες, όπως η μοντελοποίηση των χρηστών, καθώς και τεχνικές προσαρμοστικότητας (adaptivity) στον χρήστη και στο περιβάλλον λειτουργίας της εκάστοτε κινητής συσκευής. Η ενσωμάτωση των ευφυών αυτών μηχανισμών στην κινητή τεχνολογία λογισμικού αποτελεί σημαντική καινοτομία και συνεισφορά αυτής της διατριβής. Η προσαρμοστικότητα του συστήματος στο περιβάλλον της εκάστοτε διεπαφής είναι ιδιαίτερης σημασίας, αφού επιτρέπει την προσαρμογή της παρουσίασης της μεταδιδόμενης πληροφορίας ανάλογα με τη κινητή συσκευή του κάθε χρήστη. Κύρια ενότητα της διατριβής αποτελεί το πεδίο της συναισθηματικής αλληλεπίδρασης ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή, με απώτερο στόχο την εν δυνάμει ενσωμάτωση του πεδίου αυτού στην κινητή τεχνολογία λογισμικού. Η συναισθηματική αλληλεπίδραση ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή περιλαμβάνει την αναγνώριση των συναισθημάτων των χρηστών από τους υπολογιστές, καθώς και την παραγωγή συναισθηματικών καταστάσεων από την πλευρά του υπολογιστή, μέσω βοηθών-πρακτόρων. Τόσο η παραγωγή, όσο και η αναγνώριση συναισθηματικών καταστάσεων μελετήθηκε στο πλαίσιο της παρούσας διατριβής, ενώ ενισχύθηκε και η πεποίθηση και η σημασία της αλληλοσύνδεσης και αλληλεξάρτησής τους

Session Fingerprinting in Android via Web-to-App Intercommunication

The extensive adoption of mobile devices in our everyday lives, apart from facilitating us through their various enhanced capabilities, has also raised serious privacy concerns. While mobile devices are equipped with numerous sensors which offer context-awareness to their installed apps, they can also be exploited to reveal sensitive information when correlated with other data or sources. Companies have introduced a plethora of privacy invasive methods to harvest users’ personal data for profiling and monetizing purposes. Nonetheless, up till now, these methods were constrained by the environment they operate, e.g., browser versus mobile app, and since only a handful of businesses have actual access to both of these environments, the conceivable risks could be calculated and the involved enterprises could be somehow monitored and regulated. This work introduces some novel user deanonymization approaches for device and user fingerprinting in Android. Having Android AOSP as our baseline, we prove that web pages, by using several inherent mechanisms, can cooperate with installed mobile apps to identify which sessions operate in specific devices and consequently further expose users’ privacy

Smartphone Crowdsourcing and Data Sharing Towards Advancing User Experience and Mobile Services

Recent advances in IT have offered people the opportunity to have powerful ultramobile devices in their pockets incorporating a plethora of capabilities which, in most cases, require Internet connectivity. This constant need for Internet access though, especially when a wireless hotspot is unavailable requires connection via network data. The fixed cellular data packages offered by carriers usually do not come for free and to a large extend cannot be adapted to the dynamic needs of users who sometimes need more than they own, while in other cases under-use their network data.  This issue, in combination with the fact that signal quality in many areas is not even fair for one or more carriers has led to the development of a novel android application that aims at allowing users in general and tourists to “foresee” bad signal coverage at places of their interest, as well as to share their cellular data via mobile tethering

Object-oriented user interfaces for personalized mobile learning

This book presents recent research in mobile learning and advanced user interfaces. It is shown how the combination of this fields can result in personalized educational software that meets the requirements of state-of-the-art mobile learning software. This book provides a framework that is capable of incorporating the software technologies, exploiting a wide range of their current advances and additionally investigating ways to go even further by providing potential solutions to future challenges. The presented approach uses the well-known Object-Oriented method in order to address these challenges. Throughout this book, a general model is constructed using Object-Oriented Architecture. Each chapter focuses on the construction of a specific part of this model, while in the conclusion these parts are unified. This book will help software engineers build more sophisticated personalized software that targets in mobile education, while at the same time retaining a high level of adaptivity and user-friendliness within human-mobile interaction.