Showing papers in "Asia-Pacific Journal of Information Technology and Multimedia in 2019"

The Implementation of Internet of Things Using Test Bed in The UKMnet Environment

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most important components for the 4.0 industrial revolution. In order to implement IoT within an organization or environment, it requires deep research to ensure that will works properly. Among today's problems of computing is the need for high power consumption and considerable space and equipment usage. Therefore, a small-sized technology and requires only low power to operate is necessary. A study has been conducted to study the implementation of Internet of Things within the UKM network environment known as UKMNet. In order to make this research more realistic, a test bed is developed using an Arduino Uno board as the IoT Hardware. Then a scenario is created by connecting this Arduino Uno board to four sensors to measure temperature, current and voltage. After that, the reading value will be sent to the Arduino Uno board to calculate the amount of power used in watts so that these values are stored to the database server. To test the performance of the connection between the Arduino board and the server, the iPerf software is use. The metrics on performance tests are data rates, jitter and loss of data packets. As a result of this study, we found that Arduino Uno is suitable for use as the IoT hardware for this scenario. Performance tests for Arduino board that are connected to UKMNet meet the requirements for the implementation of IoT where the data transmission rate is between 3.483 Mbps up to 3.563 Mbps. The jitter value for this connection is also lower than 1.80 milliseconds to 1.85 milliseconds while the packet loss rate recorded is 0% to 0.59% for 10 seconds of data transmission. In conclusion, IoT by using Arduino Uno as an IoT hardware is suitable to implement in the UKMNet environment.

The use of ADDIE model for designing blended learning application at vocational colleges in Malaysia

Abstract: Teaching is a highly complex occupation, which needs to adapt to a great deal of variety in context, subject matter and learners. It does not lend itself to broad generalization. However, academic knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge that is important in today's society, and as teachers we have to be aware of other forms of knowledge and their potential importance to our students, and make sure that we are providing the full range of contents and skills needed for students in a digital age. E-learning strategies are still not explored extensively in the system of vocational education for the learning process in Malaysia. Nevertheless it i possible to provide guidelines or principles based on best practices, theory and research, which must then be adapted or modified to local conditions. This study discusses the instructional design and development of e-Iearning prototype called Vocational Learning (Voc-Learning) by using ADDIE model and implemented via blended learning method. ADDIE model is one of the instructional design models used by many researchers to develop software or applications related to the field of education.The design of application development based on the ADDIE is explained as Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. The strength of concerned is according to the variables have been devided into several items such as; teaching design, content, user controls and technical. Implementation phase involves formative evaluation of a prototype developed and make adjustments and improvements where necessary. The percentage of expert approval percentage becomes a benchmark in comparison. This study highlights the development of blended Voc-Learning model based on the relevant theories of teaching and learning.

Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis Methods in Recent Years

Abstract: Sentiment Analysis (SA) is the computational treatment of opinions, sentiments and subjectivity of text. Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) is a specific SA that aims to extract most important aspects of an entity and predict the polarity of each aspect from the text. A review of the recent state-of-the-art in ABSA, shows the remarkable growing in finding both aspect, and the corresponding sentiment. Current methods are categorized based on their proposed algorithms and models. For each discussed study, aspect extraction method and sentiment prediction method, the dataset, domain and the reported performance is included. The main goal of this work is to review ABSA techniques with brief details. The main contributions of this paper consist of the refined categorizations of a great number of recent articles, comparing them and the illustration of the recent trend of research in the ABSA.

Review of Interoperability Practices for Enterprise Information System (EIS) in Public Sector

Abstract: Interoperable information system is crucial to enable an organization to provide good services to users. It can give a high impact and good return to government agencies, particularly in terms of efficiency in managing information system as well as making it time and cost effective. However, the implementation and work processes involving the interoperability of the public sector information system are still under focused. The major issues identified are concerning on difficulties in the implementation of integration between legacy systems or new systems; Recurring transactions or transactions in various systems, especially those involving legacy systems or new systems; Differences in database platforms; Difficulty in implementing the system redesign process; and no standard use of meta data, data model and complete database schema that can be used as reference. They hinder the implementation of good governance and contribute to ineffective decision-making process in the public sector. Hence, a more detailed and comprehensive study should be carried out to identify the critical success factors that contribute to the interoperability of the enterprise information system in the public sector. The method of the study is qualitative. The instruments for data collection include document analysis. The finding reveals that interoperability factors and elements can be classified according to the levels of interoperability i.e. (i) Organization; (ii) Technical; and (iii) Semantics. They can then be used as the basis for the development of reference for developing comprehensive guidelines based on the success factors and elements outlined. It is hoped that these factors could contribute to the development of enterprise information systems in the public sector which emphasizes the concept of interoperability.

MyJavaSchool: Students’ Perceptions and Motivation for Computer Programming

Abstract: Computer Science subject have been introduced as a new subject in the Secondary School Standard Curriculum (KSSM) to equip students with problem solving and computational thinking skills. This Computer Science subject consists of three modules, namely Computer Programming, Database, and Human and Computer Interaction modules. As a new subject, two major problems that the teachers facing are the material and approach for teaching. Thus, the MyJavaSchool module was developed as an alternative teaching material for the form four Computer Programming modules. MyJavaSchool is a module to teach Java programming using Turtle Graphic and competency-based learning approach. This paper discusses the results of a study designed to examine students' perceptions of the MyJavaSchool module as well as their perceptions and levels of motivation on the subject of Computer Programming. This study uses a quantitative approach where questionnaires are used to collect the data. The respondents were 126 form four students. The module and a guideline were given to the teacher to implement. After a few weeks of teaching, the questionnaire was distributed to the respondents. The findings showed that the students' perceptions on the use of this module was at a good level with an average mean of 2.74. This indicates that students are still skeptical of the use of the MyJavaSchool module in learning computer programming. However, they are motivated by the learning approach used and intend to further their studies in Computer Science after they finish their secondary school. In conclusion it can be said that this module needs to be improved further. Examples for each topic need to be added because through the example, students can understand how their concepts and usage. The finding also shows that learning approaches are very important in motivating students.

Malay Named Entity Recognition Using Rule Based Approach

Abstract: Named Entity Recognition (NER) research based on rule is widely investigated and is used in various languages mainly English. However, the English NER rules are different with Malay language due to different morphology. Some of challenging issue in Malay is cross reference between named entities, and entity repetition. This paper proposes to solve the issues in Malay NER. This study starts by providing Malay online news corpus, gazeteer development, rules development and evaluation. This study focus on nine name entities i.e person, organization, position, date, time, currency, measurement and percentage. Overall the experimental result shows 90.23% precision, 92.13% recall and 91.05% f-measure. The outcome from this research is expected to help other researchers in implementing the Malay NER using rule based approach through the addition of new rules to achieve higher accuracy.

Development of a Web Based Virtual Forest Environment to Increase Threatened Plant Species Awareness

Abstract: This paper reports on the development of a web based virtual forest environment to raise the awareness of threatened plant species in particular for the family of Dipterocarpaceae. Tropical forests in Malaysia consists of unique ecosystems which are home to flora and fauna including the threatened plant species that are listed in the Red List by the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia. However, the lack of awareness on the threatened plant species somehow can jeopardise on the effort on conservation of the forest. A web based utilizing virtual environment were developed that focussed on threatened plant species. User experiments were conducted to evaluate the user acceptance on the developed application. 30 participants were divided into two groups, brochures and web version. Results showed that participants who completed the experiments with web based virtual environment increased their level of awareness as compared to the usage of conventional brochures on threatened plant species.

Towards the engagement of children with ADHD using Sifteo Cube Technology

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of Sifteo Cube Technology in engaging children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD is an early childhood neurodevelopmental disorder which starts as early as five years of age. The core symptoms are inattentiveness, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity. By identifying the history of games development and ADHD, the researchers explored the viability of using the kinesthetic technology of Sifteo Cubes to engage these children. Engaging children with ADHD can lead to better management of the children, administering of learning materials, or aid other therapeutic methods. To carry out this research, an adventure game playable on the Sifteo Cubes using open-source games development kit called Wildflower was developed and evaluated with children with ADHD for qualitative analysis. Results obtained from video capture and ethnography proved favourable. Sifteo Cubes can effectively engage the children for an average of 20 minutes. The results show that Sifteo Cubes is effective is in engaging children with ADHD.

Advanced Stroke Labeling Technique Based on Directions Features for Arabic Character Segmentation

Abstract: Offline Character segmentation of text images is an important step in many document image analysis and recognition (DIAR) applications. However, the character segmentation of both writing styles (printed and handwritten) remains an open problem. Moreover, the manual segmentation is time-consuming and impractical for large numbers of documents. Based on the unconstraint-cursive handwritten perspective, the auto character segmentation is more challenging and complex. The Arabic script writing style suffers from many common problems, such as sub-words overlapping, characters overlapping, and missed characters. These challenging issues have attracted the attention of researchers in the field of DIAR for Arabic character segmentation. The proposed method combines a new advanced Stroke Labelling based on Direction Features (SLDF2) technique and a modified vertical projection histogram (MVPH) technique. This technique extracts the relationship between each text stroke pixel and its 8 neighboring foreground pixels and labels it with the proper value before identify the possible segmentation points. The text preparation for the segmentation process was achieved using multiple preprocessing steps and developing an advanced stroke labelling technique based on direction features. Several Arabic language structural-rules were made to detect the candidate segmentation points (CSP), detect many character overlapping cases, solve the missed characters problem that appears as a result of using the text skeleton in VPH, and validate the CSP. All techniques and methods are tested on the ACDAR benchmark database. The validation method used to measure segmentation accuracy was a quantitative analysis that includes Recall, Precision, and F-measurement tests. The average accuracy of the proposed segmentation method was 92.44%, which outperforms the state-of-the-art method.

MMORPG Game Framework Based on Learning Style for Learning Computer Netwoking

Abstract: The widespread use of computer networks and high demand for computer networking skills in business and industry led to computer networking courses becoming popular in higher education institutions. However, conventional learning has not succeeded in developing the understanding and relevant skills at the expected level. Students’ performance in computer networking courses has shown a significant drop. Preliminary survey found that majority of students feel that the teachings do not match their learning styles, so boredom seems to be the main cause of decreasing performances. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effectiveness of using a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) designed based on learning styles in motivating and helping the learning of Computer Network courses. The objectives of the study are to develop a Computer Network course learning framework using online games that take into account student’s learning style, verifying and validating the framework through implementation in game prototype and assessing student acceptance of the game. The IPGame prototype designed based on constructivism, adult learning, flow and engagement theories and scaffolding techniques was developed, while the learning styles used are sequential and global. The results showed that the game has a high motivational value to students and thus the framework can be used to guide development of educational games with similar content.

Homogeneous Group Performance and Stability in Checkers

Abstract: Experiments on groups of Checkers programs, playing by majority voting, were performed to investigate performance and stability. Homogeneous groups, copies of the same program, was used to perform these experiments instead of heterogeneous group that was more complicated by factors of different programs. Experiments were performed based on a search-depth of 5, 10 and 12 using the Samuel checkers program. Games of checkers were played between groups of size ranging from 1 up to 10 for each side. Experiment results suggest that group performance increases as a kind of logarithm function as the group size gradually increases for stronger player, and the performance slowly decreases in the case of a weaker player, stability seems to increase as the group size increases.

Perceived Ease of Use Towards Acceptance on Focused Educational Video Sharing Site

Abstract: This study aimed to analyse psychological, social, technological and institutional factors in influencing perceived ease of use towards focused educational video sharing site. The acceptance factors were studied based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) constructs, namely perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards the use and behavioural intention. A series of learning software video tutorial in the form of screencast has been developed and uploaded to two forms of video sharing sites which were the focused educational video sharing site (LearnSoftware) and social media based video sharing site (YouTube) to be used in this study. A questionnaire has been used as an instrument to compare and analyse the level of students' acceptance towards both forms of video sharing site based on the original construct TAM developed. Quantitative research method was used and data were collected from 294 students of Multimedia studies (major and minor) from 5 Public Higher Learning Institutions. significant difference found in terms of the attitude towards the use. From the multiple regression analysis conducted, it was found that psychological, and technological factors have a significant connection with the students' perceived ease of use towards focused educational video sharing sites, while social and institutional factors were not significant. In conclusion, the findings of this study can benefit the educational institutions, students and instructors as well as video sharing site developers in understanding students' behaviour on accepting and using the new technology introduced.