A. A. Azeta

A Case-Based Reasoning approach for speech-enabled e-Learning system

E-Learning plays an important role in our society today; hence, higher institutions now offer courses through distance learning. Several studies and methodologies towards improving e-Learning have been proposed and provided. However, not too many works are dedicated to the design and implementation of e-Learning for the visually impaired learners. Sight challenge is a serious form of disability, yet, the existing e-Learning platform (web, mobile, etc) have not devoted enough attention to the plight of the visually impaired particularly in the area of usability. The objective of this paper is to present an intelligent speech-based e-Learning system with dual interface -Voice User Interface (VUI) and Web User Interface (WUI). Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) was engaged to provide intelligent services. Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) was used to develop the VUI, Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) for the WUI and Apache as the middle ware. The VUI and WUI are accessed through mobile phone by dialing a telephone number and the WUI using the Internet respectively. The e-Learning system will especially be useful for students who are visually impaired and those with dyslexia ailment that make reading, writing and spelling difficult. The application will complement the existing e-Learning systems such as web-based learning, m-Learning and others.

Enhancing educational learning with social network platform

In the world today, education has shown to be a major contributing factor to human and national development. The educational system developed in the last century has moved from traditional system to e-learning on static web and recently to dynamic web. With the advent of social network on the Internet, interaction has been encouraged round the world and the method of connecting everyone in the world is now so easy. Although there are various platforms that exist as social network, few of them integrate learning functionalities as a service. This paper provides a social network platform to enhance educational learning. The social network was designed using Unified modeling Language (UML) and implemented using open source software primarily to connect students and lecturer. The system extends the integration in the classroom further and thus, makes the learning process effective.

Tuberculosis-Diagnostic Expert System: an architecture for translating patients information from the web for use in tuberculosis diagnosis.

Background: Over 1.5–2 million tuberculosis deaths occur annually. Medical professionals are faced with a lot of challenges in delivering good health-care with unassisted automation in hospitals where there are several patients who need the doctor’s attention. Objective: To automate the pre-laboratory screening process against tuberculosis infection to aid diagnosis and make it fast and accessible to the public via the Internet. The expert system we have built is designed to also take care of people who do not have access to medical experts, but would want to check their medical status. Methods: A rule-based approach has been used, and unified modeling language and the client–server architecture technique were applied to model the system and to develop it as a web-based expert system for tuberculosis diagnosis. Algorithmic rules in the Tuberculosis–Diagnosis Expert System necessitate decision coverage where tuberculosis is either suspected or not suspected. The architecture consists of a rule base, knowledge base, and patient database. These units interact with the inference engine, which receives patient’ data through the Internet via a user interface. Results: We present the architecture of the Tuberculosis–Diagnosis Expert System and its implementation. We evaluated it for usability to determine the level of effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction. The result of the usability evaluation reveals that the system has a usability of 4.08 out of a scale of 5. This is an indication of a more-than-average system performance. Conclusion: Several existing expert systems have been developed for the purpose of supporting different medical diagnoses, but none is designed to translate tuberculosis patients’ symptomatic data for online pre-laboratory screening. Our Tuberculosis–Diagnosis Expert System is an effective solution for the implementation of the needed web-based expert system diagnosis.

Developing e-examination voice interface for visually impaired students in open and distance learning context

Voice-based systems allow users access to information on the internet over a voice interface. Prior studies on Open and Distance Learning (ODL) e-examination systems that make use of voice interface do not sufficiently exhibit intelligent form of assessment, which diminishes the rigour of examination. The objective of this paper is to improve on the achievements of previous studies by providing a framework that will guide the development of a voice-based e-examination expert system for the visually impaired students in ODL. The study employs a combination of technologies such as system design, server side scripting, voice-based system development, data management and rule-based reasoning in developing the system. The system was evaluated to determine the level of usability. The results of the usability evaluation showed that the developed application has an ‘average usability’ rating of 3.48 out of 5 scales. The findings show that the voice-based e-examination system will not only be of immense benefit to the visually impaired students in ODL in respective of distance, but will also complement the existing web-based method for online examination.

Comparative analysis and review of interactive voice response systems

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems uses computer generated voice unit to provide response to an input from a telephone caller. With IVR systems, mobile phone users can access information by simply dialing a telephone number to create connectivity and communication with a server or internet. The use of IVR systems is applied in areas such as e-health, banking and finance, government, telecommunication, education, amongst others. Meanwhile, there is dearth of comparative studies of existing IVR systems, hence, the need to carry out a comparative analysis of these systems in terms of their features, strength, technology/platform, limitations and methods of implementation. This study provides a review and analysis of IVR systems based on these defined criteria. In carrying out this study, 40 articles were selected and only 38 that directly relates to IVR based systems were considered for analysis. The 38 papers are the ones that satisfied the inclusion criteria used to select systems for the study. These systems have been classified into five categories based on their domain of application and a comprehensive analysis and review has been carried out to guide IVR systems developers. The summary of findings show that VoiceXML vocal interface, Voxeo speech engine and MySQL database are the most widely used tools for implementing speech and touch-tone applications. The outcome of this survey will give future direction to potential

Moving from web-of-things to voice-of-intelligent-things in e-Campus

One innovative technology is Web of Things (WoT) which refers to the ability of everyday objects to connect to the Internet and exchange information. WoT has severally been proposed in literature to enhance interconnectivity anywhere and anytime. The two distinct modes of communication in WoT that are common include person-to-thing and thing-to-thing. This study proposes a framework where remote controlling of the WoT objects within university campus may be cumbersome using only these two modes. A framework for third mode of communication in WoT environment known as voice-of-intelligent-things (VoIT) is suggested in this article. It involves using mobile phone to dial an object telephone number (OTN) and connect to any of the VoIT objects and invoke a control mechanism.

Development of Prepaid Electricity Payment System for a University Community Using the LUHN Algorithm

This work presents a University Community based electricity prepaid billing system. Generally in Nigeria, electricity customers face a lot of problems with respect to their electricity bills from the distribution companies. The challenges they face include wrongly calculated bills as a result inaccurate reading of meters, general human errors in bill preparation among others. In some other semi-automated systems in which prepaid meters are used, consumers waste much time in purchasing utility units for electricity. This is the case presently at the university community we are considered in this work. This paper presents the design and implementation of a combination of a web-based and SMS alert prepaid electricity system called for the community. The implementation of the system was done using C# programming language and Microsoft SQL Server as the database platform. The system incorporates the Luhn algorithm for generating pins for use on the simulated prepaid meters. The system is able to run on the university intranet and can also serve as internet based application.