A Softcomputing Knowledge Areas Model

Recently, ten knowledge areas (KAs) of project management have been published by the PMBOK® Guide. They comprise specific skills and experiences to ensure accomplishing project goals, and include management of: integration, scope, cost, time, quality, communications, procurement, risk, human resources and stakeholders. This research paper focuses on the ten required KAs for a project manager or a project to be successful. It aims at applying the Softcomputing modeling techniques to describe the relations between the 47 processes and the KAs. Such a model will enable users to predict the overall competencies of the project management. Thus, it provides an assessment tool to envisage, visualize and indicate the overall performance and competency of a project. The proposed Softcomputing Knowledge Areas Model (SKAM) is a two-stage model. The first stage involves ten models. Each model describes relations between a specific KA and its related processes. The outputs of these ten models will feed into the second stage that will represent the relationship between all the ten KAs and the overall predicted competencies of a project. A combination of Subtractive Clustering and Neurofuzzy modeling techniques are used. Three measures are used to validate the adequacy of the models: the mean average percentage errors, the correlation coefficient and the maximum percentage errors. The highest achieved values for these measures are 0.5751, 0.9999 and 4.7283, respectively. However, although the preliminary findings of the proposed SKAM model are promising, more testing is still required before declaring the adequacy of applying the Softcomputing modeling approach in the project management field

Assessing the Remote Engineering Lab VISIR at Al-Quds University in Palestine

Engineering labs play a vital role in engineering education, make science come alive, and supply students with better understanding of theories. As a result, they contribute to the improvement of their knowledge and skills. Remote labs not enable sharing of teaching resources such as devices, equipment and instrumentation between universities, but also relax time and space constraints; yet they are considered as a complementary asset to the traditional hands-on labs. This paper is concerned with a two-stage assessment of the engineering remote lab VISIR. In the first stage, the assessment investigated if the students accept to use VISIR in their future lab courses at the Faculty of Engineering at Al-Quds University in Palestine. In the second stage, a deeper analysis will be performed to compare VISIR to hands-on and simulators based on the evaluation criteria: performance, students’ retention rate and satisfaction survey.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Avaliação em Duas Fases do Laboratório Remoto em Engenharia, VISIR, na Universidade Al-Quds da Palestina

Os laboratórios de ciência e engenharia desempenham um papel fundamental na demonstração de conceitos e princípios, bem como na melhoria das competências técnicas. Com a introdução de laboratórios remotos foi possível partilhar dispositivos, equipamento e instrumentação entre universidades. Mais, eles evitam restrições de tempo e espaço, sendo capazes de se adaptar ao ritmo próprio de cada estudante, no caso do tempo passado no laboratório não ter sido suficiente. Neste artigo é descrito um estudo empírico, dividido em duas fases de avaliação. Na primeira fase foi avaliada a flexibilidade de aplicação do laboratório remoto em engenharia VISIR na faculdade de engenharia na Universidade de Al-Quds em Jerusalém, Palestina. Durante esta fase foi ainda avaliada a aceitação desta tecnologia, pelos estudantes, quando em interação com os laboratórios tradicionais. Na segunda fase deste estudo, que decor rerá em 2014/15, será realizada uma aprofundada análise comparativa de forma a caracterizar o VISIR perante as restantes modalidades de laboratórios de engenharia, os práticos/presenciais e os de simulação. Estas três formas de laboratório são comparadas através de testes experimentais, tendo em atenção os critérios de avaliação definidos para os laboratórios de ensino de engenharia e de acordo com os objetivos fundamentais dos cursos, nomeadamente, as taxas de retenção e de satisfação dos estudantes, bem como do seu desempenho.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Two-Stage Assessment of the Remote Engineering Lab VISIR at Al-Quds University in Palestine

Engineering labs are an essential part in engineering education since they provide practical knowledge for students, illustrate concepts and principles, and improve technical skills. Remote labs allow devices, equipment and instrumentations to be shared with other universities. Additionally, they relax time and space constraints, and are capable of being adapted to the pace of each student in case there was insufficient time in the laboratory. This paper describes an empirical study, which embeds two stages of assessment. In the first stage, we are concerned with finding out the level of flexibility when applying the engineering remote lab VISIR as a contemporary remote lab technology in the engineering faculty at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem in Palestine, and whether the engineering students will accept such technology to interact with in their future lab courses or not. In the second stage of the assessment study, a more in-depth comparative analysis will be carried out in order to have a categorization of VISIR in the landscape of the engineering labs such as hands-on and simulations. The three lab approaches will be compared with each other by means of an experimental testing based on assessment criteria that are in accordance with the fundamental course objectives of engineering instructional labs: student’s retention rate and satisfaction survey, as well as their performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

THE EMUNI E-LEARNING POLICY

Euro-Mediterranean University e-learninng policy. Final Report Published under AIDCO 2009 project, contract Nr. ENPI/2009/226-479 financed by the European Commission. March 201