Antonella Giove

A virtual classroom interface for student participation measurement

The aim of this paper is to describe the methodology employed in the construction of a virtual classroom tool based on a collaborative learning interface, also able to analyze and measure users data for assessing the application performance and evaluating the level of students participation in the proposed e-learning model. The future target will be based on the comparison of the results obtained during the experimentation phase for studying the best way to create a personalized learning path.

Use of a FIS for low cost student presence detector in e-learning 2.0

The aim of this paper is to address the issue concerning the tools for getting feedback from e-learning platform users. Our research analyzes the role of human presence in mediated learning environments proposing a possible strategy to detect it.

On Line Instruction Challenge: Ariann@ Project Example

This paper discusses a Web 2.0 oriented training model currently under consideration in the framework of the guidance project called ldquoAriann@rdquo activated by the Polytechnic of Bari. The focus is that of presenting a strongly customized e-learning platform characterized by two main priorities: accomplishing the guidance task by providing support, information, and advice in all those aspects of university life to prospective, current and graduate students as well as employing new models of teaching being compliant with Web 2.0 policy and social network technology. The goal is proposing an interactive learning environment able to encourage students to develop motivation for academic study thanks to the use of updated tools.

A Multi Agent System Modelling an Intelligent Transport System

Nowadays, the globalization is one of the most significant phenomena of contemporary life. There are many debates about the real meaning of the globalization, its roots, effects and future. Among the most important aspects of the globalization is surely the global transportation system. In this framework it is clear how the availability of an advanced integrated transportation system, for moving goods and people as quickly as possible all around the world, is a crucial requirement that cannot be ignored in any case, but actually accomplished in the best way possible. In (Frank and Engelke, 2000) there is a remarkable work of review highlighting the steady interaction between transportation systems and human activities and how the former ones have a strong impact on the organization of the built environment. These ideas give explanation for the increasing interest that the scientific community has shown in the field of the transportation systems. The recent improvements in ICT allow for the implementation of novel and pervasive systems. Indeed, in these days a wide spread of the Global Position System (GPS) and communication technologies (e.g. GSM, GPRS and UMTS network) has led to the implementation of interesting Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). These systems try to improve the optimization of many transportation system aspects such as vehicles, loads, routes and (overall) safety just by using these new technologies. Route planning is an optimization problem that has been studied extensively in the past decades. Dijkstra’s algorithm (Dijkstra, 1959) is the most well-known algorithm for determining the shortest path from one location to all other locations in a road network. Moreover it is noteworthy to mention other significant shortest path algorithms e, such as the Bellman-Ford algorithm (Bellman, 1958; Ford Jr. and Fulkerson, 1962), the D’Esopo-Pape algorithm (Pape, 1974), etc. An overview in this regard is given by (Bertsekas, 1998). One of the biggest problems of these algorithms is the huge dimension of the solution space. This fact led the researchers to use parallel computing (Delle Donne et al., 1995) and/or to propose new heuristic methods often based on artificial intelligence techniques (Suzuki et al., 1995; Pellazar, 1998).

Electronic nose for evaluating water use in beer production

This paper is focused on the results of the research project simBART. Particular attention is paid on a method for water evaluation in beer production sector. This process, under investigation, can be targeted to small and not industrialised enterprises as well as to those home brewing productions. Experimental analyses are conducted by means of VPeN, a vapour phase e-nose based on a specific sensor array. Six kinds of Italian mineral water and one type of demineralised water were taken into account in order to carry out the related tests. A comparison among signatures produced by the analysed methodology in function of each sample was realized just to produce the classification of those kinds of water, which resulted to be the most appropriate ones for specific beer production.

Social isolation monitoring system via AI approach

H2020 policy objectives are mainly oriented to social inclusion, in this regard, particular attention is given to better public services for seniors. Due to the high costs of hospitalization, the home care as well as specialized training should be preferable both for reducing public expenditure and improving the physical and psychological well-being of elderly people. In this paper an ICT tool for elderly people (or peoples with psychic, sensory, neuromotor and disabilities) is presented. Aim of this tool is to form a bridge between senior citizen and new technologies, thus overcoming the well-known rejection of “technology with unknown implications”. At the same time the presented tool is suitable to identify variations of the senior ability while doing specific actions just for by evaluating a social isolation parameter.

Dialogue disambiguation in Living Labs experience the Puglia Tremor system

The Living Lab idea was conceived by William Mitchell at MIT and since 2006 also Europe Union has been joining the living lab experience. In August 2011, the Regional Government of Apulia included Living Labs and Pre-commercial public procurement in their existing Operational Program of European Regional Development Fund. Hereinafter the project called “Puglia Tremor” is presented by focusing the attention on web based dialogue among living labs actors. This project represents one possible answer to the regional call and a proposal to future experience and further development of best practices. An innovative text disambiguation system is presented in order to overcome the well-known gap in human-computer interaction. Thanks to the proposed system the unskilled-user and public operators will be able to communicate using a web 2.0 approach.

Auction approach for management of a virtual classroom

the goal of this study is to propose a virtual classroom tool integrated within an e-learning 2.0 architecture supported by a multi agent system with auction-based approach. The proposed architecture and related features aim to provide the teacher / tutor with functionalities for monitoring, planning courses or redesigning them if necessary. The main purpose was to design a Multi Agent System (MAS) structure working in synergy with the learning environment chosen in order to simplify the management of the whole on-line training process. Specific constraints for defining the rules of the auction approach have been adopted. The test results have shown that intelligent agent technology can be used to personalize the learning environment and as a consequence to improve eLearning effectiveness.

Semantic Management Systems for the Material Support of E-learning Platforms

The paper describes a semantic-based system for e-learning platforms, designed to automate some highly time-consuming activities for the account of the cognitive process actors. To this end the system helps the instructor organize the support material for Learning Objects and guides the student in learning the structure of specific knowledge domain. Concerning the first of these aspects, the teacher is required only to indicate the resources in digital format (e-books, documents, Web pages) strictly connected to the lesson topic delivered in a structured way. At the student level, an interaction with a chatbot was analyzed in order to make the research and exploration of content more interactive. The virtual assistant guides the student in understanding structured contexts at different levels of detail (book, chapter, paragraph, sentence and phrase) and their mutual logical organization. The knowledge base was developed on the basis of the Semantic Web paradigm and uses WordNet as reference ontology. A prototype system is currently under test and evaluation at the AeFLab Laboratory of the Politecnico di Bari.

Environmental monitoring via living labs approach

The collaboration of more people with different culture and knowledge leads to well-known problems related to the terminology used among them and more generally to the reference ontology. The living labs approach can also be used to produce a convergence vocabulary. Hereinafter, the experience related to our activity is presented, it was made possible thanks to public funding for the Puglia tremor project aimed at territorial monitoring.