Semantics-supported cooperative learning for enhanced awareness

Awareness is required for supporting all forms of cooperation. In Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), awareness can be used for enhancing collaborative opportunities across physical distances and in computer-mediated environments. Shared Knowledge Awareness (SKA) intends to increase the perception about the shared knowledge, students have in a collaborative learning scenario and also concerns the understanding that this group has about it. However, it is very difficult to produce accurate awareness indicators based on informal message exchange among the participants. Therefore, we propose a semantic system for cooperation that makes use of formal methods for knowledge representation based on semantic web technologies. From these semantics-enhanced repository and messages, it could be easier to compute more accurate awareness

A model for a collaborative recommender system for multimedia learning material

Abstract. In a cluster of many servers containing heterogeneous multimedia learning material and serving users with different backgrounds (e.g. language, interests, previous knowledge, hardware and connectivity) it may be difficult for the learners to find a piece of material which fit their needs. This is the case of the COLDEX project. Recommender systems have been used to help people sift through all the available information to find that most valuable to them. We propose a recommender system, which suggest multimedia learning material based on the learner's background preferences as well as the available hardware and software that he/she has.

Designing internet of tangible things for children with hearing impairment

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) are a new, non-traditional way to interact with digital information using a physical environment. Therefore, TUIs connect a physical set of objects that can be explored and manipulated. TUI can be interconnected over the Internet, using Internet of Things (IoT) technology to monitor a child''s activities in real-time. Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT) is defined as a tangible interaction applied to IoT. This article describes four case studies that apply IoTT to children with cochlear implants and children whose communication is sign language. For each case study, a discussion is presented, discussing how IoTT can help the child development in skills such as: social, emotional, psychomotor, cognitive, and visual. It was found that IoTT works best when it includes the social component in children with hearing impairment, because it helps them to communicate with each other and build social-emotional skills

Collaborative explicit plasticity framework: a conceptual scheme for the generation of plastic and group-aware user interfaces

The advent of new advances in mobile computing has changed the manner we do our daily work, even enabling us to perform collaborative activities. However, current groupware approaches do not offer an integrating and efficient solution that jointly tackles the flexibility and heterogeneity inherent to mobility as well as the awareness aspects intrinsic to collaborative environments. Issues related to the diversity of contexts of use are collected under the term plasticity. A great amount of tools have emerged offering a solution to some of these issues, although always focused on individual scenarios. We are working on reusing and specializing some already existing plasticity tools to the groupware design. The aim is to offer the benefits from plasticity and awareness jointly, trying to reach a real collaboration and a deeper understanding of multi-environment groupware scenarios. In particular, this paper presents a conceptual framework aimed at being a reference for the generation of plastic User Interfaces for collaborative environments in a systematic and comprehensive way. Starting from a previous conceptual framework for individual environments, inspired on the model-based approach, we introduce specific components and considerations related to groupware

El Uso de Thinklets como Instrumentos de Validación de Procesos en la Gestión de Proyectos Software

Los procesos de gestión de proyectos están vinculados a las disciplinas de la ingeniería de software, en la cual se busca plantear una serie de buenas prácticas en la administración, control y seguimiento de proyectos software. La validación de estos procesos es una tarea que requiere instrumentos que permitan evaluar elalcance y los resultados de la gestión tanto documental como de talento humano en un grupo de desarrollo software. La ingeniería colaborativa surge entonces como una opción para entregar herramientas efi cientes para dicho proceso de validación, es entonces como la incursión de los llamados thinklets, instrumentos de validación que permiten entregar procedimientos e indicadores, soportados en los procesos colaborativos para contribuir a la validación de las tareas en gestión de proyectos. El presente documento entregará una síntesis sobre el resultado de un proyecto de investigación donde se logró integrar elementos colaborativos, como los thinklets a procesos de gestión de proyectos, logrando así un marco de evaluación para validar tanto procesos como tareas en la dinámica de la gestión de proyectos, el documento abordará temas relevantes en la ingeniería de software como la mejora de procesos y la ingeniería colaborativa, los cuales fueron adoptados al proyecto deinvestigación en mención, para buscar la mejora de procesos en gestión de proyectos desde la perspectiva de la ingeniería colaborativa a micro y pequeñas empresas desarrolladoras de software

A process to improve collaborative work through shared understanding in problem-solving activities

Collaborative work is becoming increasingly complex and assertive communication is necessary to solve problems in collaborative activities, where the actors must coordinate so that the group works effectively and efficiently. However, achieving true collaboration is not an easy task, there are many factors that influence its achievement, where many of these have been investigated, but the analysis of critical cognitive factors is very scarce, and more those that allow good communication and consequently good coordination. One of them is shared understanding since when working collaboratively there must be common knowledge and understanding, which works as a joint reference base to work effectively and efficiently. Therefore, this work seeks to define a process to improve collaborative work through the construction, monitoring, and assistance of shared understanding. The process has had several versions and each of them has been validated in different contexts, obtaining different types of results, both in terms of its specification and formalization, as well as in terms of its use related to ease of use, feasibility, and usefulness in the construction of shared understanding, which has allowed improving the aspects that have been identified. Through a final validation in a case study, it was determined that the process does improve collaborative work, however, it is still necessary to have technological support elements and it is necessary to lighten the elements that compose it to make it more agile to use.Facultad de Informátic

The Use of Thinklets as Process Validation Instruments in Software Project Management

Los procesos de gestión de proyectos están vinculados a las disciplinas de la ingeniería de software, en la cual se busca plantear una serie de buenas prácticas en la administración, control y seguimiento de proyectos software. La validación de estos procesos es una tarea que requiere instrumentos que permitan evaluar elalcance y los resultados de la gestión tanto documental como de talento humano en un grupo de desarrollo software. La ingeniería colaborativa surge entonces como una opción para entregar herramientas efi cientes para dicho proceso de validación, es entonces como la incursión de los llamados thinklets, instrumentos de validación que permiten entregar procedimientos e indicadores, soportados en los procesos colaborativos para contribuir a la validación de las tareas en gestión de proyectos. El presente documento entregará una síntesis sobre el resultado de un proyecto de investigación donde se logró integrar elementos colaborativos, como los thinklets a procesos de gestión de proyectos, logrando así un marco de evaluación para validar tanto procesos como tareas en la dinámica de la gestión de proyectos, el documento abordará temas relevantes en la ingeniería de software como la mejora de procesos y la ingeniería colaborativa, los cuales fueron adoptados al proyecto deinvestigación en mención, para buscar la mejora de procesos en gestión de proyectos desde la perspectiva de la ingeniería colaborativa a micro y pequeñas empresas desarrolladoras de software.Project management processes are linked to the disciplines of software engineering, which seeks to propose a series of good practices in the administration, control and monitoring of software projects. The validation of these processes is a task that requires instruments that allow evaluating the scope and results of both document management and human talent in a software development group. Collaborative engineering emerges then as an option to deliver efficient tools for said validation process, it is then like the incursion of the so-called thinklets, validation instruments that allow delivering procedures and indicators, supported in collaborative processes to contribute to the validation of project management tasks. This document will provide a summary of the result of a research project where it was possible to integrate collaborative elements, such as thinklets, into project management processes, thus achieving an evaluation framework to validate both processes and tasks in the dynamics of project management. projects, the document will address relevant issues in software engineering such as process improvement and collaborative engineering, which were adopted to the aforementioned research project, to seek process improvement in project management from the perspective of collaborative engineering through micro and small software development companies

Modelo liviano de medidas para evaluar la mejora de procesos de desarrollo de software MLM-PDS

Companies in software development in Colombia face a number of problems such as the construction of software in a artesian, empirical and disorganized way. Therefore, it is necessary for these companies to implement projects to improve their development processes, because ensure the quality of products, by improving their software processes, is a step that should give to be able to compete in the market. To implement process improvement models, it is not enough to say whether a company is actually getting benefits, definitely one of the first actions in a to improvement project is to be able to determine the current status of the process. Only by measuring it is possible to know the state of a process in an objective ay, and only through this it is possible to plan strategies and solutions, about improvements to make, depending on the objectives of the organization. This paper proposes a light model to assess software development process, which seeks to help the Colombian software development companies to determine whether the process of implementing improvements, being effective in achieving the objectives and goals set to implement this, through the use of measures to evaluate the process of improving their development processes, allowing characterize the current practices of the company, identifying weaknesses, strengths and abilities of the processes that are carried out within this and thus control or prevent the causes of low quality, or deviations in costs or planning.MSC: 68Uxx, 68NxxLas empresas de desarrollo de software en Colombia enfrentan una serie de problemas tales como la construcción de software de forma artesanal, empírica y desorganizada. Por esto, es necesario que implementen proyectos para mejorar sus procesos de desarrollo, ya que asegurar la calidad de los productos,a través de la mejora de sus procesos de software, es un paso que deben dar para estar en condiciones de competir en el mercado nacional e internacional. Implementar modelos de mejora de procesos no es suficiente para decir siuna empresa realmente está obteniendo beneficios, definitivamente una de las primeras acciones en un proyecto de mejora es el poder determinar el estadoactual del proceso. Sólo midiendo es posible conocer el estado de un proceso de manera objetiva, y sólo gracias a esto se pueden planificar estrategias y soluciones acerca delas mejoras a realizar y según los objetivos de la organización. Este artículo propone un modelo liviano de medidas para evaluar un proyecto de mejora deprocesos de software, con el cual se busca ayudar a las empresas de desarrollode software colombianas a determinar si el proceso de mejora que implementan está siendo eficaz con relación a los objetivos y metas establecidas al inicio del proyecto. Esto se lleva a cabo a través del uso de medidas que permiten evaluar el proceso de mejora de sus procesos, facilitando la caracterizaciónde las prácticas actuales de la empresa y la identificación de las debilidades, fortalezas y habilidades de los procesos que son llevados a cabo dentro de ésta, permitiendo controlar y evitar las causas de baja calidad y desviaciones encostos o en planificación.MSC: 68Uxx, 68Nx

Application of the interaction pattern, support and training to the user in the design of a video game supported on smartphones

Actualmente existe una gran variedad de patrones de interacción, los cuales plantean soluciones que no resultan sencillas de implementar, puesto que la información de cómo deben ser aplicados es limitada. A pesar de que la estructura de cada patrón contiene mínimo la descripción del problema, contexto y solución, en ocasiones los diseñadores requieren información adicional a la que este suministra para llevar a cabo su implementación. Por esta razón, el presente artículo describe de forma explícita la creación, forma de uso e implementación y evaluación de un patrón de interacción enfocado en solucionar problemas comunes de soporte y ayuda al usuario. Esto con el propósito de guiar a diseñadores de interacción de videojuegos en el uso del patrón sobre entornos de videojuegos soportados en Smartphones, buscando obtener una aplicación adecuada del mismo.Nowadays, there are a variety of interaction patterns, which proposes solutions that are not easy to implement, because the information about your application is limited. Although the structure of each pattern contains at least the problem description, context and solution, several times the interaction designers whowant to use them, require additional information to do this implementation. For that reason, this paper explicitly describes the creation, implementation and evaluation of an interaction pattern focused on solving common problems of support and helps to user. This in order to guiding the interaction designers of videogames supported in Smartphones to obtain a proper application of this pattern