A model driven approach to web-based traffic simulation.

As the world population increases the number of vehicles in the traffic increases as well, and so the traffic becomes more complex. Problems in the urban traffic such as traffic congestion, car accidents, parking difficulties, etc. have a large impact on people's lives as well as the environment. Therefore, researchers, policy makers, decision takers and planners use expert tools to find the best solutions for traffic and transportation problems. Traffic modeling and simulation has been used for analyzing, designing, planning and managing urban traffic for many years. Various techniques have been proposed and many tools have been developed by researchers to assist the modeling and simulation activities in the traffic domain for more than half a century. However, improving the existing methods and developing new tools for traffic simulation are gaining importance due to the emerging technologies. Web-based modeling and simulation has been popular in the last decade, and has a great promise in terms of collaborative and distributed simulations. Model driven approaches are employed in the simulation field for a long time and have provided rapid development solutions. In this paper, a model driven Web-based traffic simulation framework is proposed and a prototype implementation is presented

Transforming Diagrams' Semantics to Text for Visually Impaired

Using models and diagrams is a very useful and effective tool for representing information and systems in a graphical form to communicate and understand them better. On the other hand, graphical representations bring extra cognitive load and the process for understanding the diagrams is long and tedious in most cases for the visually impaired. To solve this problem, semantics of the diagrams should be converted to a different format that is both human and machine readable as well as communicable for the visually impaired. Most existing diagramming tools are not easily usable for the visually impaired as a tool for creating and using diagrams. In this paper, we propose an online system for defining specific diagrams and converting their semantics to text which can have a speech output for the visually impaired. We present analysis and design of this online system as well as a proof of concept prototype implementation. The prototype system provides create, save, load and transform features and tested with participants to recreate the diagrams using the automatically generated text output. Our case study showed that the results are very promising and the proposed solution can provide a way to correctly and accurately represent the information in diagrams textually

Using Technology to Enhance Assessment and Feedback: A Framework for Evaluating Tools and Applications

Although assessment and feedback are very important aspects of teaching and learning it has been regularly reported that there are issues with their practice. While research has shown ways to enhance assessment and feedback, and best practices have been established, various challenges, such as limitations on time and resources, make implementing such improvements difficult. Consequently, this paper considers the use of technology for supporting teaching, assessment and feedback to improve working practices and the student experience in a time and resource efficient manner. Using a feature analysis evaluation technique, this paper proposes a comparison framework for reviewing technological tools/applications that can be used to assist teaching, assessment and feedback. By providing solid rationale, this framework has the potential to enhance decision making when choosing suitable technological solutions to improve teaching and assessment, and to enhance the learning experience

Model Continuity in Discrete Event Simulation: A Framework for Model-Driven Development of Simulation Models.

Most of the well known modeling and simulation methodologies state the importance of conceptual modeling in simulation studies and they suggest the use of conceptual models during the simulation model development process. However, only a limited number of methodologies refers to howto move from a conceptual model to an executable simulation model. Besides, existing modeling and simulation methodologies do not typically provide a formal method for model transformations between the models in different stages of the development process. Hence, in the current M&S practice, model continuity is usually not fulfilled. In this article, a model driven development framework for modeling and simulation is in order to bridge the gap between different stages of a simulation study and to obtain model continuity. The applicability of the framework is illustrated with a prototype modeling environment and a case study in the discrete event simulation domain

Monitoring and Controlling Phone Usage to Raise Awareness and Combat Digital Addiction.

One of the defining factors in human progress is the fact how humans have adopted technology into their everyday lives. One of these technologies that has seen a tremendous increase in usage is the mobile phone. The potential overuse of a smartphone device is very easily done, with many possible bad psychological side effects. Digital addiction is a form of addiction that has become more prevalent with people due to the ever-growing technological advances that our devices have achieved. This work focuses on what could be done to assist people via a software application who either have the addiction or help prevent people from becoming addicted. This paper presents design and implementation of a mobile application to monitor and control the phone usage so that it can help combat digital addiction. The prototype implementation lets user see how much time they use on their phone as well as set some preferences. The study has been evaluated by user testing and having user feedback

Problem-Oriented Conceptual Model and Ontology for Enterprise e-Recruitment

Internet-led labour market has become so competitive forcing many organisations from different sectors to embrace e-recruitment. However, realising the value of the e-recruitment from a Requirements Engineering (RE) analysis perspective is challenging. The research is motivated by the results of a failed e-recruitment project as a case study by focusing on the difficulty of scoping and representing recruitment problem knowledge to systematically inform the RE process towards an e-recruitment solution specification. In this paper, a Problem-Oriented Conceptual Model (POCM) supported by an Ontology for Recruitment Problem Definition (Onto-RPD) for contextualisation of the enterprise e-recruitment problem space is presented. Inspired by Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), the POCM and Onto-RPD are produced based on the detailed analysis of three case studies: (1) Secureland Army Enlistment, (2) British Army Regular Enlistment, and (3) UK Undergraduate Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). The POCM and the ontology are demonstrated and evaluated by a focus group against a set of criteria. The evaluation showed a valuable contribution of the POCM in representing and understanding the recruitment problem and its complexity

A Conceptual Framework for Cloud-based Collaborative Online Course Provision

A cloud-based collaborative environment for online course provision between universities can facilitate a cost-effective, efficient and enriched education enabling good student experience. However, there are a number of challenges and issues that should be taken into consideration prior to adopting the collaborative environment. They relate to management and administration, cost, collaborative Virtual Learning Environment, ownership, development of courses and teaching resources, as well as culture. To address these challenges a conceptual framework is proposed for this environment which highlights key issues and associated relationships between them. The framework contains five main elements, including Quality, Legal, Security, Operation and Education. The framework illustrates the relationship between the elements. A prototype is also discussed which was designed to test part of the framework

TranspLanMeta: A metamodel for TranspLan modeling language

Transparency and transparent decision making are essential requirements in information systems. To this end, a modeling language called TranspLan has been proposed. TranspLan is a domain-specific modeling language which is designed for the purpose of analysing and modeling transparency requirements in information systems. This paper presents a metamodel for transparency requirements modeling. We are introducing a model-driven approach to TranspLan language specifications to facilitate the use of the language more efficiently in real life cases. Metamodeling is an effective method for formally defining domain specific languages and moving from specifications to computer-aided modeling. In this paper, we propose a metamodel for TranspLan modeling language which is called as TranspLanMeta. The metamodeling process helps us to transfer TranspLan language specifications into a machine-readable format. The metamodel has been developed with GME (Generic Modelling Environment), which is a configurable toolkit for creating domain-specific modeling and program synthesis environments. By developing TranspLanMeta with GME, an automatically-generated modeling tool for TranspLan language is provided as well. In this way, an effective approach for accelerating software development is followed and the auto-generated modeling editor is used to define various models. This work provides a formal and practical solution for transparency modeling and a well-defined basis for using transparency requirements models in the further steps of the business process

Towards a Systematic Literature Review of Non-Functional Requirement Prioritization Approaches

The success of any software system depends on implementation of functional requirements followed by non-functional ones. There are various studies about prioritizing functional requirements and improving the prioritization techniques, but the work related to non-functional requirements prioritization is limited and there are no guidelines about which technique to be executed under particular circumstances. This paper does an empirical systematic review of the literature to identify and critically review the disseminated work based on empirical studies of software industries or presenting the non-functional requirement (NFR) prioritization approaches. The literature review yielded various insights; prominent amongst them includes, ad-hoc manner of NFR prioritization, neglection of NFRs, and the need for validation of existing NFR prioritization approaches on live data set with large number of NFRs which are always changing

A Process Model for Component-Based Model-Driven Software Development

Developing high quality, reliable and on time software systems is challenging due to the increasing size and complexity of these systems. Traditional software development approaches are not suitable for dealing with such challenges, so several approaches have been introduced to increase the productivity and reusability during the software development process. Two of these approaches are Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) and Model-Driven Software Development (MDD) which focus on reusing pre-developed code and using models throughout the development process respectively. There are many research studies that show the benefits of using software components and model-driven approaches. However, in many cases the development process is either ad-hoc or not well-defined. This paper proposes a new software development process model that merges CBSE and MDD principles to facilitate software development. The model is successfully tested by applying it to the development of an e-learning system as an exemplar case stud