Wearable Technology: Opportunities and Challenges for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Developing Countries

The higher education landscape in developing countries is faced with many challenges, one of which is high faculty to student ratio. An obvious implication of this is compromise on the quality of classroom engagement. The distractions caused by the not conducive learning space and instructors’ inability to elucidate correct feedbacks from students usually lead to poor learning outcomes. Feedback mechanisms that are unobtrusive and efficient in processing large data in real-time are needful to measure quality learning experience in such large classroom settings. With the latest impact of penetration and adoption of internet and mobile technologies in most developing counties, wearable technology is a feasible solution to manage and monitor classroom involvement; as real time student feedback can be integrated in the design and delivery of instruction in and out of the classroom. In this paper, we present state of the art of wearable technology and explored the opportunities of wearable technology in the higher education. Specifically, we presented scenarios in which wearable technology can be employed to understand and analyze physiological signals and emotional responses from learners in real-time; the end result of which would increase the quality of classroom engagement, inspire new pedagogy, drive new trends in peer-to-peer collaborations, and increase the learning outcomes. Moreover, we identified some challenges that may hinder this development such as: inconclusive user studies of wearable technology in developing countries and inadequate infrastructure. Finally, we make appropriate recommendations on how these challenges can be surmounte

Factors Affecting Computer Science Research Productivity and Impact in Nigeria: A Bibliometric Evidence

Computer science is a burgeoning research field and has the potential to accelerate the rate of industrialisation and subsequently, economic development. Using bibliometric data obtained from Scopus, this study employed a 15-year bibliometric analysis to highlight Nigeria’s productivity and impact trends in the computer science research landscape. Our findings are summarised as follows: First, Nigeria’s computer science research contribution and citations are meager in comparison to the global output. Secondly, international collaboration is generally weak as most collaborations are national in scope. Third, Nigeria’s computer science-related research is published in low-quality outlets, as Scopus has discontinued the indexing of most of the outlets. Although the publication growth trend is encouraging, the volume and impact of computer science-related research can improve significantly with the conduct of more quality researches that facilitated by strong international collaborations, and published in very high-quality outlets

Fuzzy Hybrid Approach for Ranking and Selecting Services in Cloud-based Marketplaces

Background and Objective: The popularity cloud computing has led to the proliferation of services that are commoditized and traded on cloud e-marketplaces. Besides, user’s cloud service requirements-QoS preferences and aspiration are often shrouded in vagueness and subjectivity. Therefore, cloud service selection can be overwhelming and lead to service choice overload. Existing cloud service selection approaches rarely provide mechanisms to elicit both the QoS preferences and aspirations, but rather considers either of them. This study aimed to design fuzzy-based model for service selection in e-market places that articulates both QoS preferences and aspirations. Materials and Methods: This model comprised a fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method for deriving relative priority weights of QoS attributes, a fuzzy decision-making method for obtaining user’s QoS aspiration values and a fuzzy multi-objective optimization module for evaluating the services with respect to user requirements. A simulated experiment was conduct using publicly QoS dataset and ranking accuracy produced by the proposed approach compared to existing methods was measured using Normalize Discounted Cumulative Gain (NCDG) metric. Results: The descriptive and inferential analyses of the ranking results from both versions of the proposed approach produce better accuracy results based on the NCDG metric and were in all cases closer to the benchmark metric than the other two existing methods used in this simulation. Conclusion: Results from current simulation experiment showed that the ranking accuracy of this model is not compromised by subjective QoS information from users and this approach is applicable use the subjective QoS requirements of user’s in ranking services in the cloud e-marketplaces

Interactive Preference-based Approach to Optimal Feature Configuration of Multi-dimensional Service Platforms

A multi-dimensional service delivery platform (MDSP) supports development, deployment and management of services in multiple business domains, serves multiple consumers with different functional and non-functional requirements and integrates services from diverse external collaborators to actualize the platform’s business objective. Consumers of product line services have variant needs that are based on the specific requirements of their business objectives, which demands optimal configuration of the MDSP. Optimal configuration of the MDSP connotes the existence of the most appropriate set of features on the MDSP that best approximates the consumer’s requirements, in the face of multiple conflicting objectives. So far, solutions proposed in the literature have mainly used either a priori or a-posterior methods. In prior methods, the requirements and preference information is provided before the configuration process begins; while a set of possible configurations is first generated and preferred selection is made from the set in a-posterior methods. These methods lack the kind of flexibility afforded by interactive methods in an attempt to generate satisfactory results. The aim of this research is to develop an approach that engenders the derivation of optimal configurations from a multi-dimensional service platform (MDSP), in a manner that is interactive and meets the needs of the consumer

Design of a QoS-based Framework for Service Ranking and Selection in Cloud E-marketplaces

In most existing commercial cloud e-marketplaces, finding a suitable cloud service to perform user's objectives can be cognitively demanding and potentially affects the user satisfaction of both the process and outcome of decision making. Most existing cloud selection techniques have not sufficiently addressed the problem of service choice overload in a manner, that provides means that elicits subjective user preferences. Besides, only a few of these techniques suffice in situations where there are a large number of services to be evaluated and the results are presented in textual formats, either in a list or tables, which does not provide any means of comparison of results returned. Based on a comparative review of existing service selection techniques, a set of requirements was identified to guide the design of cloud service selection framework that would suffice in a cloud e-marketplace context. A cloud service selection framework was formulated that encapsulates the set of requirements. The increase in the number of available services on the e-marketplace leaves the users in the dilemma of which service to select, particularly when the services perform equivalent functionalities and may only differ with respect to their quality of service (QoS) attributes. The proposed framework is a viable proposition for the reduction service choice overload in cloud service e-marketplaces

Design of a QoS-based Framework for Service Ranking and Selection in Cloud E-marketplaces

In most existing commercial cloud e-marketplaces, finding a suitable cloud service to perform user's objectives can be cognitively demanding and potentially affects the user satisfaction of both the process and outcome of decision making. Most existing cloud selection techniques have not sufficiently addressed the problem of service choice overload in a manner, that provides means that elicits subjective user preferences. Besides, only a few of these techniques suffice in situations where there are a large number of services to be evaluated and the results are presented in textual formats, either in a list or tables, which does not provide any means of comparison of results returned. Based on a comparative review of existing service selection techniques, a set of requirements was identified to guide the design of cloud service selection framework that would suffice in a cloud e-marketplace context. A cloud service selection framework was formulated that encapsulates the set of requirements. The increase in the number of available services on the e-marketplace leaves the users in the dilemma of which service to select, particularly when the services perform equivalent functionalities and may only differ with respect to their quality of service (QoS) attributes. The proposed framework is a viable proposition for the reduction service choice overload in cloud service e-marketplaces

Factors Affecting Computer Science Research Productivity and Impact in Nigeria: A Bibliometric Evidence

Computer science is a burgeoning research field and has the potential to accelerate the rate of industrialisation and subsequently, economic development. Using bibliometric data obtained from Scopus, this study employed a 15-year bibliometric analysis to highlight Nigeria’s productivity and impact trends in the computer science research landscape. Our findings are summarised as follows: First, Nigeria’s computer science research contribution and citations are meager in comparison to the global output. Secondly, international collaboration is generally weak as most collaborations are national in scope. Third, Nigeria’s computer science-related research is published in low-quality outlets, as Scopus has discontinued the indexing of most of the outlets. Although, the publication growth trend is encouraging, the volume and impact of computer science-related research can improve significantly with the conduct of more quality researches that facilitated by strong international collaborations, and published in very high-quality outlets

The impact of internet access on cloud computing research in Africa: Analysis of bibliometric and online search data

The objective of this paper is to uncover the relationship between inter- net penetration and cloud computing research output and to underst and the connection between the interest in cloud computing on research out-puts in cloud computing from African countries. For the period of 2009 to 2017, bibliometric data on cloud computing research was retrieved from the Scopus database. Online search traffic data on the search term “cloud computing” was obtained from Google trends for the period under review. Our results show that there was a strong significant correla- tion between internet penetration and the total number of scholarly outputs within the given period for all countries studied, suggesting that an increase in internet penetration is directly proportional to increase in cloud computing research activities and outputs from a given region. The penetration of internet technologies contributes significantly to the advancement of research efforts and scholarly outputs in ICT-related endeavours

An Approach for e-Commerce On-Demand Service-oriented Product line Development

The growth of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) is important to the economic development of Africa. This growth can be greatly enhanced by leveraging IT in business activities since e-commerce is a vital tool to allow participation in globalization. Many SMMEs cannot afford to own e-commerce facilities and to reduce cost. An SMME can pay for just the e-commerce facility they use without owning the services or infrastructure. Due to the dynamic nature of the business domain, delivering such on-demand functionalities involves high flexibility in adapting to new client requirements; therefore, a systematic approach to software component reuse must be adopted to reduce cost and the time to market for new products. This work explores the reuse capabilities of a hybridization of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software Product Line (SPL)