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Journal ArticleDOI

Building A Next-Generation Infrastructure for Agent-based Distance Learning

TL;DR: An integrated and extensible architecture for agent-based distance learning that provides component-based extensibility, allowing emerging technologies to be plugged-in, so that they can produce synergy.
Abstract: The emergence of the internet has radically changed the way in which we learn, teach and train. This paper proposes an integrated and extensible architecture for agent-based distance learning. The architecture provides component-based extensibility, allowing emerging technologies to be plugged-in, so that they can produce synergy. It provides HTTP and IIOP connections for maintaining and delivering courseware to students. Via an HTTP connection, our Persona system provides a personalised service to each set of courseware, allowing it to customise its content and/or presentation context-sensitively. This service facilitates the effective delivery of courseware. Via an IIOP connection, our SoftDock system provides a foundation facility allowing users to work collaboratively in teams. Our current educational domain is software modelling. Participants learn the basic concepts and principles of software modelling and then leverage their newly acquired modelling skills. We believe our work provides a blueprint for showing how emerging technologies can be applied to practical distance learning applications.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article discusses the topic of learning objects in three parts, identifying a need for learning objects and describing their essential components based on this need, and drawing on concepts from recent developments in computer science to describe learning objects from a theoretical perspective.
Abstract: This article discusses the topic of learning objects in three parts. First, it identifies a need for learning objects and describes their essential components based on this need. Second, drawing on concepts from recent developments in computer science, it describes learning objects from a theoretical perspective. Finally, it describes learning objects in practice, first as they are created or generated by content authors, and second, as they are displayed or used by students and other client groups.

296 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: As the complexities of distributed collaborative development environments increase, frameworks designed for such environments will become essential, and one such framework is described called SoftDock, which lets developers analyze, design, and develop software from component models.
Abstract: The Internet has been changing the way people collaborate on software development, offering certain advantages but also creating new requirements. Internet based collaboration does make a wider base of talent available, but the development cycles running at Internet speeds require maintaining higher levels of precision. From a project management perspective, communication is a key factor in Internet based development. Internet based collaboration requires effective team communication. The authors point out that when a development team isn't communicating well, it is nearly impossible to create and validate design solutions and manage the team's deliverables. So while Internet collaboration offers a number of advantages, the friction created by distributed (therefore delayed) communication typically increases the overhead associated with sharing project information. And the technology itself, including system interoperability and the synchronous or asynchronous collaboration tools, can create problems in a distributed development environment. As the complexities of distributed collaborative development environments increase, frameworks designed for such environments will become essential. The authors describe one such framework called SoftDock, and the new technologies it exploits. It lets developers analyze, design, and develop software from component models.

26 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 Sep 2002
TL;DR: In this paper the main directions of eLearning systems evolution and stages of each direction are defined and the roles of ontologies and intelligent agents in such systems are recognized.
Abstract: The advanced educational technologies and environments must provide personalized learning services within broad spectrum of user needs. The Semantic Web is considered to be a promising way to meet this requirement. In this paper the main directions of eLearning systems evolution and stages of each direction are defined. The roles of ontologies and intelligent agents in such systems are recognized. We identify and describe five layers of ontologies needed in future eLearning systems. Different levels of educational queries and scenarios of its processing are considered. An approach to constructing a personalized learning program based on the Semantic Web technologies is proposed. To ensure the maximal flexibility the eLearning system is organized as a multi-agent system (MAS) composed by three kind of agents: student agent, search agent and course constructing agent. In conclusion some MAS software implementation issues are briefly considered.

21 citations


Cites background from "Building A Next-Generation Infrastr..."

  • ...The mediator-agents are considered to be active actor in different negotiations in eLearning systems [17-19]....

    [...]

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Sep 1999
TL;DR: The SoftDock architecture, system organization, and design considerations in managing UXF descriptions in the distributed environment are described.
Abstract: The paper describes our SoftDock system, which is a distributed model management system to support collaborative software development. SoftDock leverages the team development, tool interoperability, and model continuity across development lifecycle. It supports Unified Modeling Language (UML) to specify software models, and maintains the model information with UML eXchange Format (UXF), which is a XML-based model interchange format. UXF-encoded model descriptions are shared and managed through the Document Object Model (DOM) interface implemented on top of CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) middleware. The paper describes the SoftDock architecture, system organization, and design considerations in managing UXF descriptions in the distributed environment.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A case study of the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) highlights the need for institutional leaders to take a proactive stance and to generate an organisational development strategy appropriate to the ethos of their particular institution as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The rapid rate of technological change and the rapidly growing number of institutions now embarking on Internet-based delivery means that more institutions are involved in distance education than at any other time in history. As institutions throughout the world increasingly offer courses via the Internet, there will emerge a global higher education economy in which institutions will face global competition for students, especially those involved in continuing professional education and lifelong learning. The emergence of the global higher education economy could well act as a catalyst for overcoming the institutional inertia that typifies the organisational culture of many universities. This transition from the Industrial to the Information Age was encapsulated by Dolence and Norris (1995), who argued that to survive organisations would need to change from rigid, formula driven entities to organisations that were ”fast, flexible, and fluid” (p. 31) – adjectives not typically used to describe the salient features of universities! This case study outlines the response of a well-established dual mode institution, The University of Southern Queensland (USQ), to the ”gales of creative destruction” (Schumpeter, 1950, p. 84) that currently beset higher education institutions throughout the world. Technological Development and Globalisatio Distance education operations have evolved through the following four generations (Taylor, 1995): first, the Correspondence Model based on print technology; second, the Multimedia Model based on print, audio and video technologies; third, the Telelearning Model, based on applications of telecommunications technologies to provide opportunities for synchronous communication; and fourth, the Flexible Learning Model based on online delivery via the Internet (Table 1). While the first generation has a long history, it is generally accepted that most of the technology enhanced distance learning developments have occurred over the past twenty-five years. Indeed, it is fair to say that the fourth generation of distance education is only just beginning to have an impact in many contexts, due partly to the rate of institutional development in higher education, USQ: An E-university For An E-world 2 which tends to be stymied by a predominantly conservative ethos and associated mindsets. Until recently, many on-campus educators have largely ignored the new technologies, with the process of face-to-face conventional teaching regarded as patently superior to all other forms of teaching. While distance educators have striven to overcome the tyranny of distance, the perceived constraints associated with limited opportunities for face-to-face interaction, on-campus educators appear to be basically satisfied with traditional approaches. It is in this context of institutional inertia that the senior managers and leaders of educational institutions have been bedevilled by complex decision making structures. The typical collegiate decision making process often entails a sequence of deliberation, documentation, reflection, review and refinement through consideration by a series of learned groups often including a working party, at least one committee, several faculty boards, the Academic Board, the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive Committee and perhaps the University Council. This modus operandi for management is no longer sustainable in an environment where the changing scale and scope of technological change is greater than ever. Today, change is the only constant. As more and more institutions embrace Internet-based delivery (see [http: //www.dlcoursefinder.com] for examples of courses and providers) competition for students is becoming increasingly competitive on a global scale. In effect, a global lifelong learning economy is emerging. The result is that higher education will become increasingly market driven, such that in the near future institutional success will depend primarily on students’ perceptions of flexibility of access, quality of service and value for money. Each institution has unique characteristics and will, of course, respond to these challenges in its own way. The individual response of any institution will be a function of its history, present organisational culture and the beliefs and personalities of current institutional leaders. The following exemplary case study of the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) highlights the need for institutional leaders to take a proactive stance and to generate an organisational development strategy appropriate to the ethos of their particular institution. USQ: Structures, Culture and Processes Established by the Australian Federal Government in 1967, to provide oncampus higher education opportunities primarily for residents of the Darling Downs region of Southern Queensland, The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) became a dual mode institution when it initiated distance education delivery in 1977. Twenty-three years later, the USQ has over 13,000 distance education students studying off-campus in over 60 countries, and over 5,000 students studying on-campus in Toowoomba. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning USQ: An E-university For An E-world 3 Organisational Structure An overview of the organisational structure of the University is presented in Figure 1.

10 citations


Cites background from "Building A Next-Generation Infrastr..."

  • ...This agent would alter not only display preferences, but would also amend content according to previously established user preference (Suzuki & Yamamoto, 2000)....

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References
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Book
01 Jan 1994
TL;DR: The book is an introduction to the idea of design patterns in software engineering, and a catalog of twenty-three common patterns, which most experienced OOP designers will find out they've known about patterns all along.
Abstract: The book is an introduction to the idea of design patterns in software engineering, and a catalog of twenty-three common patterns. The nice thing is, most experienced OOP designers will find out they've known about patterns all along. It's just that they've never considered them as such, or tried to centralize the idea behind a given pattern so that it will be easily reusable.

22,762 citations


"Building A Next-Generation Infrastr..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Their contents and presentations are determined at runtime....

    [...]

Proceedings ArticleDOI
27 Mar 1997
TL;DR: This work explores some design principles for autonomous interface agents, and illustrates these principles with a description of Letizia, an autonomous interface agent that makes real-time suggestions for Web pages that a user might be interested in browsing.
Abstract: Two branches of the trend towards “agents” that are gaining currency are inre~ace agents, software that actively assists a user in operating an interactive interface, and autonomous agents, software that takes action without user intervention and operates concurrently, either while the user is idle or taking other actions. These two branches are related, but not identical, and are often lumped together under the single term “agent”. Much agent work can be classified as either being an interface agent, but not autonomous, or as an autonomous agent, but not operating directly in the interface. We show why it is important to have agents that are both interface agents and autonomous agents. We explore some design principles for such agents, and illustrate these principles with a description of Letizia, an autonomous interface agent that makes real-time suggestions for Web pages that a user might be interested in browsing.

440 citations


"Building A Next-Generation Infrastr..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...UML is a standard objectoriented modeling method that provides most of the semantics and their notations required for representing software constructs, and has been widely accepted by academic and commercial developers....

    [...]

01 Jan 1990

317 citations


"Building A Next-Generation Infrastr..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...UML is a standard objectoriented modeling method that provides most of the semantics and their notations required for representing software constructs, and has been widely accepted by academic and commercial developers....

    [...]

Book
01 Jul 1998
TL;DR: The authors first present the foundations, then give a thorough description of the influences of artificial intelligence, networks, and communication systems, followed by the relevant development methods and tools.
Abstract: This methodical presentation of intelligent software agents is based on a series of case studies. The authors first present the foundations, then give a thorough description of the influences of artificial intelligence, networks, and communication systems. The relevant development methods and tools are described next, followed by the application areas for intelligent software agents. Numerous examples are used to offer the reader extended descriptions of individual software agents, especially the agents BargainFinder and Kasbah. The treatment balances equally the basic foundations and the practical implementation of intelligent software agents. Thus the book is equally suited for both application and development work.

208 citations