Genoveva López

An instructional model for web‐based e‐learning education with a blended learning process approach

Web-based e-learning education research and development now focuses on the inclusion of new technological features and the exploration of software standards. However, far less effort is going into finding solutions to psychopedagogical problems in this new educational category. This paper proposes a psychopedagogical instructional model based on content structure, the latest research into information processing psychology and social contructivism, and defines a blended approach to the learning process. Technologically speaking, the instructional model is supported by learning objects, a concept inherited from the object-oriented paradigm.

Learning objects, learning objectives and learning design

Educational research and development into e‐learning mainly focuses on the inclusion of new technological features without taking into account psycho‐pedagogical concerns that are likely to improve a learner’s cognitive process in this new educational category. This paper presents an instructional model that combines objectivist and constructivist learning theories. The model is based on the concept of a learning objective which is composed of a set of learning objects. A software tool, called the Instruction Aid System (IAS), has been developed to guide instructors through the development of learning objectives and the execution of the analysis and design phases of the proposed instructional model. Additionally, a blended approach to the learning process in Web‐based distance education is also presented. This approach combines various event‐based activities: self‐paced learning, live e‐learning and the use of face‐to‐face contact in classrooms.

A component- and connector-based approach for end-user composite web applications development

Enabling real end-user development is the next logical stage in the evolution of Internet-wide service-based applications. Successful composite applications rely on heavyweight service orchestration technologies that raise the bar far above end-user skills. This weakness can be attributed to the fact that the composition model does not satisfy end-user needs rather than to the actual infrastructure technologies. In our opinion, the best way to overcome this weakness is to offer end-to-end composition from the user interface to service invocation, plus an understandable abstraction of building blocks and a visual composition technique empowering end users to develop their own applications. In this paper, we present a visual framework for end users, called FAST, which fulfils this objective. FAST implements a novel composition model designed to empower non-programmer end users to create and share their own self-service composite applications in a fully visual fashion. We projected the development environment implementing this model as part of the European FP7 FAST Project, which was used to validate the rationale behind our approach.

A web-centred approach to end-user software engineering

This article addresses one of the major end-user software engineering (EUSE) challenges, namely, how to motivate end users to apply unfamiliar software engineering techniques and activities to achieve their goal: translate requirements into software that meets their needs. EUSE activities are secondary to the goal that the program is helping to achieve and end-user programming is opportunistic. The challenge is then to find ways to incorporate EUSE activities into the existing workflow without users having to make substantial changes to the type of work they do or their priorities. In this article, we set out an approach to EUSE for web-based applications. We also propose a software lifecycle that is consistent with the conditions and priorities of end users without programming skills and is well-aligned with EUSEs characteristic informality, ambiguity and opportunisticness. Users applying this lifecycle manage to find solutions that they would otherwise be unable to identify. They also develop quality products. Users of this approach will not have to be acquainted with software engineering, as a framework will take them through the web-centred EUSE lifecycle step-by-step. We also report a statistical experiment in which users develop web software with and without a framework to guide them through the lifecycle. Its aim is to validate the applicability of our framework-driven lifecycle.

Implementation of end-user development success factors in mashup development environments

The Future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessed from all over the Web. This approach has been supported by many software providers who have provided a wide range of mash up tools for creating composite applications based on components prepared by the respective provider. These tools aim to achieve the end-user development (EUD) of rich internet applications (RIA); however, most, having failed to meet the needs of end users without programming knowledge, have been unsuccessful. Thus, many studies have investigated success factors in order to propose scales of success factor objectives and assess the adequacy of mashup tools for their purpose. After reviewing much of the available literature, this paper proposes a new success factor scale based on human factors, human-computer interaction (HCI) factors and the specialization-functionality relationship. It brings together all these factors, offering a general conception of EUD success factors. The proposed scale was applied in an empirical study on current EUD tools, which found that todays EUD tools have many shortcomings. In order to achieve an acceptable success rate among end users, we then designed a mashup tool architecture, called FAST-Wirecloud, which was built taking into account the proposed EUD success factor scale. The results of a new empirical study carried out using this tool have demonstrated that users are better able to successfully develop their composite applications and that FAST-Wirecloud has scored higher than all the other tools under study on all scales of measurement, and particularly on the scale proposed in this paper. Shows a mashup platform that lets end users make their own web applicationsProposes a new scale based on a set of objective factorsProposes a reference architecture built taking into account the factors of successThis architecture achieves more success among end users that current platformsIt is useful to know which decisions are relevant for achieving end-user satisfaction.

A formal framework for interaction protocol engineering

This paper presents a formal framework devised to support interaction protocol (IP) engineering. The proposed framework is organized into three views that consider all the stages of a protocol engineering process, i.e. the design, specification, validation, implementation and management of IPs. The modeling view allows visual IP design. The specification view automatically outputs, from the design, the syntactic specification of the IPs in a declarative-type language called ACSL, which improves IP publication, localization and machine learning by agents. Finally, the implementation view provides a formal operational semantics for the ACSL language. This semantics allows protocol property verification and eases automatic code generation from the ACSL specification for the purpose of simulating code execution at design time, as well as improving and assuring correct IP compliance at run time.

A formal specification language for agent conversations

Agents interact in the context of a society to exchange knowledge, to cooperate and to coordinate their activities. A standard approach is to describe these interactions as conversations specified by means of interaction protocols (IPs). The set of conversations in which an agent can participate defines its communication interface. Therefore, the standardised sets of IPs that specify these conversations can be viewed as Agent Interface Definitions (AID), just as procedure and function definitions make up programming interfaces (API) in other programming paradigms. This paper presents the abstract syntax and semantics of ACSL: a new formal specification language that can clearly and precisely describe these interfaces so that they can be consumed both by designers and programmers (generally using CASE tools) and automatically by actual agents during interaction. This language fills a gap in the development of agent interface definition languages (AIDL). The paper focuses particularly on the newest features of the language, like (1) protocol composition, (2) protocol exceptions related to the reception of out-of-sequence messages or timeout expirations, (3) compensation protocols that adapt the classical concept of transaction to the autonomy and rationality of agents and, finally, (4) specification of message correlation and causality.

Web-centred end-user component modelling

This paper formally defines a web component model enabling end-user programmers to build component-based rich internet applications (RIAs) that are tailored to meet their particular needs. It is the product of a series of previously published papers. The formal definition in description logic verifies that the model is consistent and subsumes currently existing models. We demonstrate experimentally that it is more effective than the others.Current tools propose very disparate web component models, which are based on the appropriate invocation of service backends, overlooking user needs in order to exploit these services and resources in a friendly manner. We have proposed a web model based on a detailed study of existing tools, their pros and cons, limitations and key success factors that have enabled other web end-user development (WEUD) solutions to help end-user programmers to build software to support their needs. In this paper we have verified that the proposed model subsumes and is instantiated by the models of the other existing tools that we analysed, coming a step closer to the standardization of end-user centred RIAs and development environments. We have implemented a development tool, called EzWeb, to produce RIAs that implement the proposed model. This tool enables users to develop their application following the models component structure based on end-user programming success factors. We report a statistical experiment in which users develop increasingly complex web software using the EzWeb tool generating RIAs that conform to the proposed component model, and other WEUD tools generating RIAs that conform to other models. This experiment confirms the applicability of the proposed model and demonstrates that more end-user programmers (EUPs) (users concerned with programming primarily for personal rather public use) successfully develop web solutions for complex problems using the EzWeb tool that implements the model, which is more efficient than existing tools that implement other models. Programming-illiterate users face barriers exploiting web service composition tools.We offer a user-centric approach to Internet of Services to tackle these obstacles.This approach adapts service front-ends for end users to build SOA-based software.Thus, end users can create applications to support their routine work on their own.The presented approach elicits the best practices and principles of the current SOTA.

Automated end user-centred adaptation of web components through automated description logic-based reasoning

Abstract Context This paper addresses one of the major end-user development (EUD) challenges, namely, how to pack today’s EUD support tools with composable elements. This would give end users better access to more components which they can use to build a solution tailored to their own needs. The success of later end-user software engineering (EUSE) activities largely depends on how many components each tool has and how adaptable components are to multiple problem domains. Objective A system for automatically adapting heterogeneous components to a common development environment would offer a sizeable saving of time and resources within the EUD support tool construction process. This paper presents an automated adaptation system for transforming EUD components to a standard format. Method This system is based on the use of description logic. Based on a generic UML2 data model, this description logic is able to check whether an end-user component can be transformed to this modelling language through subsumption or as an instance of the UML2 model. Besides it automatically finds a consistent, non-ambiguous and finite set of XSLT mappings to automatically prepare data in order to leverage the component as part of a tool that conforms to the target UML2 component model. Results The proposed system has been successfully applied to components from four prominent EUD tools. These components were automatically converted to a standard format. In order to validate the proposed system, rich internet applications (RIA) used as an operational support system for operators at a large services company were developed using automatically adapted standard format components. These RIAs would be impossible to develop using each EUD tool separately. Conclusion The positive results of applying our system for automatically adapting components from current tool catalogues are indicative of the system’s effectiveness. Use of this system could foster the growth of web EUD component catalogues, leveraging a vast ecosystem of user-centred SaaS to further current EUSE trends.

A model to capture and manage tacit knowledge using a multiagent system

This article presents a model to capture and register business tacit knowledge belonging to different sources, using an expert multiagent system which enables the entry of incidences and captures the tacit knowledge which could fix them. This knowledge and their sources are evaluated through the application of trustworthy algorithms that lead to the registration of the data base and the best of each of them. Through its intelligent software agents, this system interacts with the administrator, users, with the knowledge sources and with all the practice communities which might exist in the business world. The sources as well as the knowledge are constantly evaluated, before being registered and also after that, in order to decide the staying or modification of its original weighting. If there is the possibility of better, new knowledge are registered through the old ones. This is also part of an investigation being carried out which refers to knowledge management methodologies in order to manage tacit busi...