Hilary Dexter

An Ontology-Based Curriculum Knowledgebase for Managing Complexity and Change

A curriculum knowledgebase, based on a visual model and ontology, is presented part way through its development lifecycle. The early modelling stages have yielded a means to tackle the complex curriculum structure, an operational knowledgebase and consensus among the domain experts on the ways in which the academic curriculum development team, students and administrators will interact with the curriculum and become involved with its ongoing maintenance and enhancement. Development continues of route-based and collaborative editing interfaces to the knowledgebase. The knowledgebase system is generally applicable to all structured curricula and is being evaluated in three schools of medicine that use Problem Based Learning.

SOA-MDK: Towards a Method Development Kit for Service Oriented System Development

This paper argues that appropriate modeling methods for service oriented development have not matured at the same pace as the technology because the conceptual underdeveloped. The paper describes a method for service oriented development based on an adaptation and enhancement of component based techniques. The use of reference models to widen the scope of the methodology is proposed. The method is described using a complex case study from Higher Education.

Establishing a development process for composite applications in the work-based learning and competency management domain

There are management issues surrounding the development process required for the creation of software components that are to be implemented in applications and offered as constituents of a component or service framework. We offer ways of ensuring capability in a development team to provide services that may be assembled into multiple composite applications. We identify the following interrelated factors as necessary to the move to successful service-based application development: model-driven development, process capability and maturity, system requirements traceability, facilitating collaboration between domain experts and the technical implementers and process-based support for the development team. The proposed development process provides a basis for development project management and for support for all the involved roles.