Requirements elicitation for virtual actors in collaborative learning environments

This paper reports on the elicitation of requirements for Virtual Actors in Collaborative Virtual Learning Environments (CVLEs). The methodological approach followed involves the phased development of a series of learning environments which are observed in use by parents, children and teachers. The focus of study is on the interactivity and social communication issues that arise in the learning situation. The research uses as its case study the work of the Manchester Museum Education Service with children at Key Stage Level 2 (9–11 years old) of the National Curriculum. The particular learning situation is based on senet, an ancient Egyptian board game from the Museum’s collection of artefacts from the pyramid builders’ town of Kahun. Results are presented of the first phase prototype, a single display groupware system where interactions take place face-to-face in the ‘real-world’ external to the environment. Results are also presented of the second phase prototype, a multi-user groupware environment in which the users are remotely located and interaction is mainly internal to the environment. The paper discusses how the results from these two phases are being used to establish requirements for a CVLE to be developed in the third phase of research.     

A multi-layered architecture for sketch-based interaction within virtual environments

In this article, we describe a multi-layered architecture for sketch-based interaction within virtual environments. Our architecture consists of eight hierarchically arranged layers that are described by giving examples of how they are implemented and how they interact. Focusing on table-like projection systems (such as Virtual Tables or Responsive Workbenches) as human-centered output-devices, we show examples of how to integrate parts or all of the architecture into existing domain-specific applications — rather than realizing new general sketch applications — to make sketching an integral part of the next-generation human–computer interface.     

System dynamics simulations for data-intensive applications

Simulation modeling is increasingly perceived as a methodological asset to the field of data science. Nonetheless, adequate graphical database interfaces are missing especially for most System Dynamics (SD) simulation tools. SimSyn is freely available middleware used to link together models developed in VENSIM with a PostgreSQL database for spanning SD models over geographic or multi-dimensional parameter space. The capabilities of SimSyn are demonstrated by simulating terrestrial carbon storage for 10,000 years on a 5 arc-min raster mesh with 278,115 grid cells. Results indicated the reasonable performance of data-linked simulations (7, 500 to 10,000 runs per 15 min) and a considerable increase of computational overheads associated with additional time series inputs. Apart from increasing performance, the incorporation of SD interoperability standards is a key objective for the further development of SimSyn.     

Conversation rebuilding: From the foreign language classroom to implementation in an intelligent tutoring system

This paper shows how an innovative “communicative” technique in teaching foreign languages—Conversation Rebuilding (CR)—readily lends itself to implementation in an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Classroom language teachers using CR get students to formulate acceptable utterances in a foreign idiom by starting from rough approximations (using words the students know) and gradually zeroing in on the utterance which a native speaker of that idiom might produce in a similar setting. The ITS presented here helps students do the “zeroing in” optimally. It lets them express themselves temporarily in an “interlingua” (i.e., in their own kind of French or English or whatever they are studying), as long as they make something of their communicative intent clear, that is, as long as the System can find a semantic starting point on which to build. The ITS then prods the students to express themselves more intelligibly, starting from the “key” elements (determined by a heuristic based on how expert classroom teachers proceed) and taking into consideration the students' past successful or unsuccessful attempts at communication. To simplify system design and programming, however, conversations are “constrained”: students playact characters in set dialogs and aim at coming up with what the characters actually say (not what they could possibly say). While most Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) focuses the attention of students on norms to acquire, the ICALL implementation of CR presented in this paper focuses the attention of students on saying something—indeed, almost anything—to keep the conversation going and get some kind of meaning across to the other party. It sees successful language acquisition primarily as the association of forms with intent, not simply as the conditioning of appropriate reflexes or the elaboration/recall of conceptualized rules (which are the by-products of successful communication). Thus, in espousing this hard-line communicative approach, the present paper makes a first, non-trivial point: ICALL researchers might usefully begin by investigating what the more able teachers are doing in the classroom, rather than by building elaborate computer simulations of out-dated practices, as happens all too often. The paper then goes on to describe the architecture of a prototype ITS based on CR—one that the authors have actually implemented and tested—for the acquisition of English as a foreign language. A sample learning session is transcribed to illustrate the man-machine interaction. Concluding remarks show how the present-day limits of ICALL (and Artificial Intelligence in general) can be partially circumvented by the strategy implemented in the program, i.e. by making the students feel they are creatively piloting an interaction rather than being tested by an unimaginative machine.     

Innovative pedagogical practice with ICT in three Nordic countries – differences and similarities

Three Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland and Norway, participated in the IEA SITES 2006 study. All the three countries have launched huge policy and investment programmes to promote digital literacy and readiness for the information age. In relation to the remarkable Finnish Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, it is interesting to see if the Finnish school system may be better suited to ground and contextualize pedagogical practice with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) than the Danish and Norwegian counterparts. One main difference is that the Finnish system seems to anchor decisions about and interpretations on how ICT should be utilized stronger at the local level than the two other systems. One of the general goals in the policy programmes is to get teachers to innovate with ICT in the classrooms. The Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES) 2006 indicators for two innovative pedagogical orientations, lifelong learning orientation and connectedness are utilized to compare teachers from the three nations. The main findings is that Finnish teachers are either not differing or they are scoring significantly lower on the two indicators than teachers from Denmark or Norway. The exception is Finnish science teachers who are more inclined towards using ICT in lifelong learning practices than their Danish and Norwegian counterparts. Generally, the Finnish teachers seem to be more autonomous in their pedagogical choices but may also be more conservative than the Danish and Norwegian teachers in making use of ICT.     

The impact of primary school teachers’ educational beliefs on the classroom use of computers

For many years, researchers have searched for the factors affecting the use of computers in the classroom. In studying the antecedents of educational computer use, many studies adopt a rather limited view because only technology-related variables, such as attitudes to computers and computer experience were taken into account. The present study centres on teachers’ educational beliefs (constructivist beliefs, traditional beliefs) as antecedent of computer use, while controlling for the impact of technology-related variables (computer experience, general computer attitudes) and demographical variables (sex, age). In order to identify differences in determinants of computer use in the classroom, multilevel modelling was used (N = 525). For measuring primary teachers’ use of computers to support the leaching or learning process a modified version of the ‘Class Use of Computers’ scale of van Braak et al. [van Braak, J., Tondeur, J., & Valcke, M. (2004). Explaining different types of computer use among primary school teachers. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 19(4), 407–422] was used. The present article supports the hypothesis that teacher beliefs are significant determinants in explaining why teachers adopt computers in the classroom. Next to the impact of computer experience, general computer attitudes and gender, the results show a positive effect of constructivist beliefs on the classroom use of computers. Traditional beliefs have a negative impact on the classroom use of computers.     

Towards an RCC-Based Accelerator for Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications are a critical tool in designing sophisticated mechanical systems such as jet engines and gas turbines. CFD applications use intensive floating-point calculations and are typically run on High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. We analyze three of the most compute intensive functions (Euler, Viscous, and Smoothing algorithms) and develop a baseline system architecture for accelerating these functions in RCC hardware. We then present detailed design data for the most compute intensive (Euler) function. Based on this analysis, we show that an RCC-based CFD accelerator—compared to conventional processors—promises dramatic improvement in sustained compute speed at better price-performance ratios coupled with much lower overall power consumption.     

Teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their use of digital media in classrooms: Sharpening the focus of the ‘will, skill, tool’ model and integrating teachers’ constructivist orientations

The ‘will, skill, tool’ model is a well-established theoretical framework that elucidates the conditions under which teachers are most likely to employ information and communication technologies (ICT) in the classroom. Past studies have shown that these three factors explain a very high degree of variance in the frequency of classroom ICT use. The present study replicates past findings using a different set of measures and hones in on possible subfactors. Furthermore, the study examines teacher affiliation for constructivist-style teaching, which is often considered to facilitate the pedagogical use of digital media. The study’s survey of 357 Swiss secondary school teachers reveals significant positive correlations between will, skill, and tool variables and the combined frequency and diversity of technology use in teaching. A multiple linear regression model was used to identify relevant subfactors. Five factors account for a total of 60% of the explained variance in the intensity of classroom ICT use. Computer and Internet applications are more often used by teachers in the classroom when: (1) teachers consider themselves to be more competent in using ICT for teaching; (2) more computers are readily available; (3) the teacher is a form teacher and responsible for the class; (4) the teacher is more convinced that computers improve student learning; and (5) the teacher more often employs constructivist forms of teaching and learning. The impact of constructivist teaching was small, however.     

ODE: a tool for distributing object-oriented applications

Object-oriented applications are increasingly being deployed in distributed computing environments. Technologies, such as Java RMI, and architectures, such as CORBA, DCOM, and Enterprise Java Beans, are facilitating and enhancing this trend. The performance and eventual success of these applications is dependent on distribution decisions made by the application designer. This decision is a complex one, involving a large number of alternatives and multiple conflicting criteria. Rigorous approaches for effective distribution of object-oriented applications are still lacking. This paper describes the implementation of a practical and effective approach for distributing object-oriented applications. A prototype decision support system—object distribution environment (ODE)—that implements the approach in the form of a user-friendly tool for the design of distributed object-oriented applications is described. ODE has been successfully used in the distribution of a real world distributed object-oriented system.     

Pedagogical approaches for technology-integrated science teaching

The two separate projects described have examined how teachers exploit computer-based technologies in supporting learning of science at secondary level. This paper examines how pedagogical approaches associated with these technological tools are adapted to both the cognitive and structuring resources available in the classroom setting. Four teachers participated in the first study, undertaken as part of the InterActive Education project in Bristol; all of them used multimedia simulations in their lessons. The second study presented was part of the wider SET-IT project in Cambridge; 11 teachers in eight schools were observed using multimedia simulations, data logging tools and interactive whiteboards. Teachers were interviewed in all cases to elicit their pedagogical thinking about their classroom use of ICT.     

Determining factors of the use of e-learning environments by university teachers

E-learning environments increasingly serve as important infrastructural features of universities that enable teachers to provide students with different representations of knowledge and to enhance interaction between teachers and students and amongst students themselves. This study was designed to identify factors that can explain teachers’ use of e-learning environments in higher education. A questionnaire was completed by 178 teachers from a wide variety of departments at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. We found that 43% of the total variance in teacher use of e-learning environments could be explained by their opinions about web-based activities and their opinions about computer-assisted learning (predictors) and the perceived added value of e-learning environments (mediating variable). In other words, teachers’ use of e-learning environments can be explained to a high extent by their perceptions of the added value of these environments, which in turn are substantially influenced by their opinions about web-based activities and computer-assisted learning.     

Textual Data Mining to Support Science and Technology Management

This paper surveys applications of data mining techniques to large text collections, and illustrates how those techniques can be used to support the management of science and technology research. Specific issues that arise repeatedly in the conduct of research management are described, and a textual data mining architecture that extends a classic paradigm for knowledge discovery in databases is introduced. That architecture integrates information retrieval from text collections, information extraction to obtain data from individual texts, data warehousing for the extracted data, data mining to discover useful patterns in the data, and visualization of the resulting patterns. At the core of this architecture is a broad view of data mining—the process of discovering patterns in large collections of data—and that step is described in some detail. The final section of the paper illustrates how these ideas can be applied in practice, drawing upon examples from the recently completed first phase of the textual data mining program at the Office of Naval Research. The paper concludes by identifying some research directions that offer significant potential for improving the utility of textual data mining for research management applications.     

The Design, Implementation, and Operation of a Hungarian E-Mail Reader

The market's leading Hungarian Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operator—Westel—has recently introduced a Hungarian e-mail reading system as a regular service. It was implemented on the basis of an experimental system developed at the Department of Telecommunications and Telematics of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (DTT BUTE). In this article, the considerations involved in the design and implementation decisions of both the experimental and the industrial systems will be described. Results of the first 10 weeks of regular use of the industrial system will also be given.     

Mobile Java RMI support over heterogeneous wireless networks: A case study

Distributed object-oriented platforms are increasingly important in wireless environments to provide frameworks for collaborative computation and for managing a large pool of distributed resources. One of the important layers for implementing distributed computing in such environments is via remoting mechanisms. For example, Java uses Remote Method Invocation (RMI) for handling distributed controls. In this paper, we investigate the support for this important layer on wireless environments and address the issues to support Java RMI over heterogeneous wireless environments. We present a case study for supporting Java RMI in Bluetooth, GPRS, and WLAN environments, which represents an important middleware for component communications. The Bluetooth layer is supported by incorporating a set of protocol stack layers for Bluetooth, known as JavaBT that has been developed by us, and by supporting an L2CAP layer with sockets to support Java RMI sockets. RMI over GPRS/WLAN is achieved by RMI implementation over IP layer. Our support for the roaming of Java RMI over heterogeneous wireless networks is based on the concept of direct connection, which avoids the problems caused by forwarding. The difficulty of this strategy is how to handle the existing connection when the mobile node moves to another location so as to avoid interruption of the high-level applications. We solve this problem in Java RMI by the support of dynamic addresses and dynamic sockets. We also propose algorithms to handle the handoff process. In addition, methods for connect-loss detection and data-integrity maintenance in dealing with roaming scenarios are also presented. Java Grande benchmarks are used to demonstrate that our RMI implementations over GPRS, WLAN, and Bluetooth networks are effective in supporting parallel and distributed control of Java layers in heterogeneous wireless environments.     

Cui bono?: Revisiting the promises and perils of online learning

We chronicle—in both an historical and bibliographic framework—the discussion of rhetorics of empowerment and disempowerment throughout the last 15 years, and we also examine the promises and perils of current trends in online teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on the role of universities in promoting distance education. This article addresses the question cui bono?, or who benefits, from the rush to technologize teaching and learning? We address the extent to which the continued rush to technologize teaching and learning is a perilous return to a rhetoric of empowerment that as compositionists we must continue to interrogate critically; we question how, in an era of 24/7 learning, students may or may not benefit and also how teachers may lose out, based on the increased workload and course management surrounding online learning.     

Student papers across the curriculum: Designing and developing a corpus of British student writing

This paper reports on a collaborative project, currently being carried out by the Centre for English Language Teacher Education and the Warwick Writing Programme at the University of Warwick, England, to compile a multimillion-word corpus of student writing. Since May 2001, we have collected samples of proficient written coursework produced by students at all levels and in a range of disciplines. We believe this student writing collection will eventually provide an invaluable database for use by researchers and writing teachers, enabling them to identify and describe, in a systematic way, the characteristics of assigned work across disciplines and levels of study. Our corpus is confined to shorter assignments assessed within departments—the most common form of student writing, but unpublished and therefore generally unavailable to researchers. This paper describes the project, and explains the rationale for developing the corpus. It also considers the corpus’ potential role as a resource for research and teaching within and across subject disciplines.     

What is the best programming environment/language for teaching robotics using Lego Mindstorms?

We are in the process of producing a range of eductional materials to teach robotics to a variety of audiences using the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System. We briefly review the programming environments currently available, and consider how appropriate they are for each of our candidate audiences. There is the usual trade-off between ease of use and power. It is suggested that no single programming environment is suitable for all audiences. Instead, aprogression of environments from microworlds, through graphical programming environments, to textual languages seems to provide the best way to develop our teaching. This work was presented in part at the 7th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 16–18, 2002.     

A vapor extraction teaching module based on AIRFLOW/SVE

This is the fourth in a series of papers exploring the application of professional quality software to environmental engineering education. Jennings (1997) discussed how the differences between ‘professional’ and ‘educational’ software should translate into software attributes and illustrated many of these attributes using the bioremediation package BIO1D (Srinivasan and Mercer, 1989). Jennings and Kuhlman (1997) illustrated more of these attributes using the MATHCAD 6.0 (Mathsoft, Inc., 1995) electronic book air pollution modeling package GAUSSIAN MODELS 1.1 (Zannetti, 1995). Most recently, Mesania and Jennings (1997) illustrated the power of a ‘pseudo-CAD’ user interface using the landfill hydraulic analysis program Help Model for Windows—HMfW v2.05 (Grace Dearborne, Inc., 1993). This paper concentrates on the power of using a true CAD user interface. This is done using the AIRFLOW/SVE (Guiguer et al., 1995) which evaluates vapor extraction soil remediation. Example simulations are presented to illustrate the power of CAD interfaces to express complex problems and to present results in easily comprehended graphics. Examples are also presented to illustrate how this package can help students identify successful applications of vapor extraction remediation.     

基于Docker技术的GUI应用的在线迁移研究

GUI应用在桌面环境中占据主流,在线迁移GUI应用能够提升用户体验.然而,当今广泛使用的X窗口系统所定义的协议十分复杂,不利于GUI进程的在线迁移.另外,如果两台机器的运行时环境不一致,将会导致迁移失败.因此至今未有实现GUI应用的在线迁移.近年来,Wayland作为新的图形接口协议面世,其中规定软件图形渲染由GUI客户端负责,这为迁移工作带来极大的便利.而当今热门的Docker容器技术则能把Wayland GUI应用及其运行时库打包,确保运行时环境的一致性.当迁移发生时,整个容器都会被迁移至目标机器继续运行.本文开发了相应的处理Wayland协议模块,并在CRIU工具的基础上实现了重建Wayland状态.通过实验证明,本文方案是可行的,容易推广到其他的GUI应用.