Content uploaded by Sahra Sedigh Sarvestani
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sahra Sedigh Sarvestani on Jan 20, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
A Pervasive Computing Platform for Individualized Higher Education
Abstract and Figures
Advances in database management, distributed computing, computational intelligence, and especially pervasive systems, provide fertile ground for radical changes in pedagogy. We propose a pervasive educational platform that builds on these technologies to facilitate customization of courses and degree programs to the needs, interests, and backgrounds of individual students. Computer-based teaching tools are coupled with remote access to course content to present the same information in different ways, to accommodate differences in learning styles; encourage active, rather than passive learning; allow self-pacing, privacy, and flexibility; and ensure efficient utilization of resources. In this platform, an educational system, e.g., an undergraduate degree program in computer science, is viewed as a collection of three communities; the student community, the degree (or program) community, and the instructor/advisor community. In each community, the members are represented by software agents. Each agent carries sufficient intelligence and knowledge to allow communication and negotiation among agents. The platform aims to achieve a virtual one-to-one student/faculty ratio for the purposes of mentoring, advising, guiding, and educating students.
Figures - uploaded by Sahra Sedigh Sarvestani
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Sahra Sedigh Sarvestani
Content may be subject to copyright.
... The design of pervasive computing with respect to education is studied by the authors in [19]. A pervasive computing platform for individualized higher education is given in [20]. ...
... Zhang and colleagues applied pervasive computing design to education [5]. Hurson and Sedigh, created a suitable pervasive computing platform for tertiary education [6]. ...
Abstract—Pervasive computing is an advanced computing paradigm which makes computing available everywhere and anywhere. It allows users to interact with computers. Such computers can exist in different forms such as laptops, tablets, a pair of glasses (wearable computers) and clothes or wearable fabrics that are sensor-embedded. It is essential to explore the different applications of pervasive computing to learning in classroom environments, in order to foster learning and promote well-being among students. One of the problems currently confronting some developing countries is a lack of adequate facilities to support proper learning in classroom environments. This has had a negative impact on the performance of students at various levels of educational learning. In this paper, a review of current trends, future trends and applications of pervasive computing was explored, particularly with respect to classroom learning environments, and a generic model of pervasive computing technology was proposed for adoption in classroom learning environments of developing countries, particularly the Nigerian tertiary institution’s classroom learning environment.
Keywords—pervasive computing, classroom environments, pervasive technologies, current trend, future trends
... Zhang and colleagues applied pervasive computing design to education [5]. Hurson and Sedigh, created a suitable pervasive computing platform for tertiary education [6]. ...
Pervasive computing is an advanced computing paradigm which makes computing available everywhere and anywhere. It allows users to interact with computers. Such computers can exist in different forms such as laptops, tablets, a pair of glasses (wearable computers) and clothes or wearable fabrics that are sensor-embedded. It is essential to explore the different applications of pervasive computing to learning in classroom environments, in order to foster learning and promote well-being among students. One of the problems currently confronting some developing countries is a lack of adequate facilities to support proper learning in classroom environments. This has had a negative impact on the performance of students at various levels of educational learning. In this paper, a review of current trends, future trends and applications of pervasive computing was explored, particularly with respect to classroom learning environments, and a generic model of pervasive computing technology was proposed for adoption in classroom learning environments of developing countries, particularly the Nigerian tertiary institution’s classroom learning environment.
Keywords—pervasive computing, classroom environments, pervasive technologies, current trend, future trends
... Zhang and colleagues applied pervasive computing design to education [5]. Hurson and Sedigh, created a suitable pervasive computing platform for tertiary education [6]. ...
Pervasive computing is an advanced computing paradigm which makes computing available everywhere and anywhere. It allows users to interact with computers. Such computers can exist in different forms such as laptops, tablets, a pair of glasses (wearable computers) and clothes or wearable fabrics that are sensor-embedded. It is essential to explore the different applications of pervasive computing to learning in classroom environments, in order to foster learning and promote well-being among students. One of the problems currently confronting some developing countries is a lack of adequate facilities to support proper learning in classroom environments. This has had a negative impact on the performance of students at various levels of educational learning. In this paper, a review of current trends, future trends and applications of pervasive computing was explored, particularly with respect to classroom learning environments, and a generic model of pervasive computing technology was proposed for adoption in classroom learning environments of developing countries, particularly the Nigerian tertiary institution’s classroom learning environment.
Keywords—pervasive computing, classroom environments, pervasive technologies, current trend, future trends
... Zhang and colleagues applied pervasive computing design to education [5]. Hurson and Sedigh, created a suitable pervasive computing platform for tertiary education [6]. ...
Pervasive computing is an advanced computing paradigm which makes computing available everywhere and anywhere. It allows users to interact with computers. Such computers can exist in different forms such as laptops, tablets, a pair of glasses (wearable computers) and clothes or wearable fabrics that are sensor-embedded. It is essential to explore the different applications of pervasive computing to learning in classroom environments, in order to foster learning and promote well-being among students. One of the problems currently confronting some developing countries is a lack of adequate facilities to support proper learning in classroom environments. This has had a negative impact on the performance of students at various levels of educational learning. In this paper, a review of current trends, future trends and applications of pervasive computing was explored, particularly with respect to classroom learning environments, and a generic model of pervasive computing technology was proposed for adoption in classroom learning environments of developing countries, particularly the Nigerian tertiary institution’s classroom learning environment.
Keywords—pervasive computing, classroom environments, pervasive technologies, current trend, future trends
... We leverage our research in multidatabases, mobile agent technology, pervasive computing, and mobile data access systems to develop middleware that serves as global information sharing cyberinfrastructure [21]- [25]. The middleware is positioned on top of existing database and course management systems, and allows anytime, anywhere intelligent and transparent access to learning artifacts that comprise the courses of a curriculum. ...
Advances in databases, computational intelligence, and pervasive computing, which allow “anytime, anywhere” transparent access to information, provide fertile ground for radical changes in pedagogy. Cyberinfrastructure leveraging these technological advances can yield improvements in both instruction and learning, supporting a networked curricular model, facilitating collaboration within and among groups of students and instructors, and providing continuous access to instructional material. The trajectory followed by each student through the curriculum can be intelligently personalized, based on prior knowledge and skills, learning styles, and interests of the student, among other attributes. We propose to achieve these objectives by developing Pervasive Cyberinfrastructure for Personalized Learning and Instructional Support (PERCEPOLIS), which serves as the centerpiece of an experiment to create a community of faculty and students over a set of campuses, focusing on STEM disciplines. While numerous distance learning methods exist, we believe that the best way to provide STEM education is to use a blended approach - one that embraces both online components and classroom mentoring by qualified faculty members. The goal is to provide high-quality STEM education for the students, while raising the skill set of the entire community through teaching collaboration.
According to the guideline of Washington Accord, accreditation of every engineering curriculum is necessary in order to reach the minimum criteria set as the benchmark. In this context, data analysis is required based on the several input parameters which will ultimately lead to satisfy the program outcome. In this context, a novel model is proposed which reveals the importance of computational intelligence applied over specific input data so that the required benchmark can be achieved. Different blocks are shown for identification of phase-wise analysis, and corresponding to relevant blocks, specific soft computing techniques are applied so that the desired input data can be extracted which will be further processed in order to obtain desired human resources fit for both academia and industry. Novelty of the proposed model also lies in the fact that it also considers the change of didactic for benefit of the students, if necessary, whereas other literatures made their analysis based on specific pedagogical techniques. Role of academic and psychological counselor is taken into consideration as a part of feedback mechanism, and meaningful outcome may be obtained through proper implementation.
Pervasive systems embody all the time, everywhere, transparent services, such as those provided by modern critical infrastructure systems, computer-supported health care networks, and smart living environments. The infrastructure envisioned is composed of heterogeneous computing devices, ranging from supercomputers and powerful workstations, to small devices such as sensors, PDAs, and cell phones, augmented by software and middleware. The main themes of this chapter are tools and techniques for dynamic reconfiguration and interoperability of pervasive systems. It provides an introduction to mobile agent technology, which can be employed in achieving interoperability among multiple interacting pervasive systems. The chapter discusses sensor networks, which support a considerable fraction of the pervasive systems currently deployed, along with software and hardware approaches to their dynamic reconfiguration. It focuses on collaboration and interoperability among independently deployed sensor networks. The chapter illustrates the application of these tools and techniques in two different pervasive computing contexts. interoperability; mobile agents; ubiquitous computing; wireless sensor networks
This article discusses the challenges in computer systems research
posed by the emerging field of pervasive computing. It first examines
the relationship of this new field to its predecessors: distributed
systems and mobile computing. It then identifies four new research
thrusts: effective use of smart spaces, invisibility, localized
scalability, and masking uneven conditioning. Next, it sketches a couple
of hypothetical pervasive computing scenarios, and uses them to identify
key capabilities missing from today's systems. The article closes with a
discussion of the research necessary to develop these capabilities
A multidatabase system provides integrated access to heterogeneous, autonomous local databases in a distributed system. An important problem in current multidatabase systems is identification of semantically similar data in different local databases. The Summary Schemas Model (SSM) is proposed as an extension to multidatabase systems to aid in semantic identification. The SSM uses a global data structure to abstract the information available in a multidatabase system. This abstracted form allows users to use their own terms (imprecise queries) when accessing data rather than being forced to use system-specified terms. The system uses the global data structure to match the user's terms to the semantically closest available system terms. A simulation of the SSM is presented to compare imprecise-query processing with corresponding query-processing costs in a standard multidatabase system. The costs and benefits of the SSM are discussed, and future research directions are presented.
We present a conceptual network model for the organization of courseware and the related information. Using the hierarchy
and association rules of the concepts, we can organize components and courseware episodes as a multi-layer knowledge network,
which has a reasonable classification and discloses the complicated interdependent relations among the knowledge. With retrieval
based on concept and association among concepts, people can manage and develop courseware, and lead the course for self-organizing
and study.
This article focuses on prospective challenges that might arise due to the implementation of ubiquitous computing. Users, in traditional computing environments, actively choose to interact with computers. Ubiquitous computing applications are likely to be different they will be embedded in the users' physical environments and integrate seamlessly with their everyday tasks. This vision leads to a set of defining characteristics, requirements, and research challenges for ubiquitous applications. This article identifies some of the key characteristics via a possible real-world scenario and derives the important application design and software infrastructure challenges that must be addressed by the computing research community. The omnipresence of ubiquitous applications is typically achieved by either making the technological artifacts move with the user or by having the applications move between devices tracking the user. In both cases, applications have to adapt to changing technological capabilities in their environment.
Commercial search engines, especially meta-search engines, were designed to locate the information by querying multiple conventional search engines and integrating the partial results generated by each search engine. A few meta-search engines attempt to intelligently select the search engines that perform best for a particular query. The problem of finding the search engine that performs best for a query is known as the search engine selection problem. This paper proposes a new solution to the search engine selection problem. The proposed solution borrows the summary schemas model from the multidatabase arena. It also utilizes user feedback and past performance to improve upon the future performance. A simulator was developed to show the validity of the model and to test its performance against solutions embedded in the design of some meta-search engines. Simulation results are presented and analyzed.
The features and applications of pervasive information community organization (PICO) - a framework for creating mission-oriented dynamic communities of autonomous software entities that perform tasks for user and devices, are discussed. It is stated that service-provisioning communities allow a high degree of transparency between users and applications on one hand and the infrastructure on the other. It is pointed out that quality of service (QoS) provisioning and resource management are critical to PICO's applications such as telemedicine and crisis management. It is suggested that the deployment of PICO-driven environments for applications in every field of life, including military, office management, and disaster prevention is possible.
Multidatabase systems are widely used as a mechanism to integrate distributed heterogeneous data sources. The Summary Schemas Model (SSM) as a multidatabase solution provides high performance, supports scalability, and can handle imprecise queries. A distinct characteristic of this model is that it utilizes a Thesaurus to capture the semantic relation between database contents and represents information in an abstract manner. However, in today's mobile computing environment, the SSM faces several new challenges including handling unreliable wireless communication and supporting mobile users that have limited resources. The advances in mobile agent technology have enabled multidatabase designers to address these obstacles. The execution autonomy of mobile agents relaxes the requirement on network connection while the conventional distributed system design paradigm, the client-server model, depends heavily on the reliability of the network. Moreover, the execution autonomy feature provides a great opportunity for conserving energy, a limited and critical resource of mobile devices. Because of the many assets mobile agents possess, in recent years, mobile agent based distributed information system development is thriving [11][20][21][23].
A mobile agent is an executing program that can migrate, at times of its own choosing, from machine to machine in a heterogeneous network. On each machine, the agent interacts with stationary service agents and other resources to accomplish its task. In this chapter, we first make the case for mobile agents, discussing six strengths of mobile agents and the applications that benefit from these strengths. Although none of these strengths are unique to mobile agents, no competing technique shares all six. In other words, a mobile-agent system provides a single general framework in which a wide range of distributed applications can be implemented eciently and easily. We then present a representative cross-section of current mobile-agent systems. 1 Introduction A mobile agent is an executing program that can migrate, at times of its own choosing, from machine to machine in a heterogeneous network. On each machine, the agent interacts with stationary service agents and other resource...