Irene Y. L. Chen

A social network-based system for supporting interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer network

Knowledge sharing enables people in virtual communities to access relevant knowledge (explicit or tacit) from broader scope of resources. The performance in such environments is fundamentally based on how effectively the explicit and tacit knowledge can be shared across people, and how efficiently the created knowledge can be organized and disseminated to enrich digital content. This study will address how to apply social network-based system to support interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer networks. Results of this study demonstrate that applying such social network-based collaboration support to knowledge sharing helps people find relevant content and knowledgeable collaborators who are willing to share their knowledge.

Ubiquitous Provision of Context Aware Web Services

Context-aware Web service is an interactive model between the context of service requesters and the services in Web-enabled environments. We envision that providing context-aware services is the first step toward ubiquitous Web services to enhance current Web-based e-business by finding right business partners, right business information, and right business services in the right place at the right time. The major contributions of this paper are the development of our context model and context aware service oriented architecture (CA-SOA). We have developed a context model to formally describe and acquire contextual information pertaining to the service requesters and services. Based on the model, we have constructed CA-SOA for ubiquitous Web service discovery and access based on service and requesters surrounding context

Ubiquitous Provision of Context-Aware Web Services

Providing context-aware Web services refers to an adaptive process of delivering contextually matched Web services to meet service requesters’ needs at the moment. This article presents an ontology-based context model that enables formal description and acquisition of contextual information pertaining to both service requesters and services. The context model is supported by context query and phased acquisition techniques. We also report two context-aware Web services built on top of our context model to demonstrate how the model can be used to facilitate Web services discovery and Web content adaptation. Implementation details of the context elicitation system and the evaluation results of context-aware services provision are also reported.

Universal Access and Content Adaptation in Mobile Learning

Universal access is known as the concept of facilitating accesses to the desired data according to the varying capabilities and characteristics of users [1]. Universal access aims to be capable of recognizing and responding to the presence of different context in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way. To achieve this goal, two important issues need to be solved, they are context awareness and content adaptation. In this paper, context is referred to as contextual information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity where an entity can be a person, a place, a physical or computational object [2]. The contextual information can be where and when the users are (time and space), as well as what the content are available nearby, and etc.

Web 2.0 Services for Identifying Communities of Practice through Social Networks

This paper presents a social network-based peer-to-peer search service for identifying right collaborators in the context of Web 2.0. We present a three-layer hierarchical social network, in which we identify two important relationship ties - knowledge relationship tie and social relationship tie. These relationship ties are metric used to measure the collaboration strength between pairs of participants on a social network. The stronger the knowledge relationship tie, the more knowledgeable the participants; the stronger the social relationship tie, the more likely the participants are willing to share their knowledge. By analyzing and calculating these relationship ties among peers using our computational model, we propose a systematic way to discover collaboration peers according to configurable and customizable requirements. Experiences of providing Web 2.0 services for identifying communities of practice through peer-to-peer search are also reported.

Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Sharing in Collaboration Supported VirtualLearning Communities

In this paper, we apply peer-to-peer and instant messenger for the augmentation of knowledge sharing in collaboration supported virtual learning communities. We enhance current peer-to-peer and instant messenger with content quality control and social network to further improve content discovery and group discussion. Content found by peer-to-peer is referred to accessible explicit knowledge, while the discussion and interaction details recorded in instant messenger is referred to tacit knowledge. Results of this study demonstrate that with our enhanced mechanism, it can help learners find relevant content as well as knowledgeable collaborators who are willing to share their knowledge.

DEVELOPMENT OF WIRELESS EMBEDDED SYSTEMS USING COMPONENT BASED SOFTWARE

Many mobile and wireless devices are connecting to the Internet nowadays, among them, mobile phones and PDAs are the most popular ones. Thus, in this paper, we will focus on how to develop embedded software running on the two devices by using design patterns and Java based software components. Notably, some components may be used directly in an embedded software system, whereas most components must be specialized prior to reuse. Developers have to identify the variation points on these components. In order to develop a reusable embedded software system, we will identify several variation points with some variants, and introduce some useful design patterns for implementing variation points. Consequently, we can customize an embedded software system just through attaching variants on corresponding variation point in our system. The design patterns we are using are property container, strategy, decorator, and model-view-controller. The component technology we are using is J2ME. J2ME is a specification focused on the development of mobile applications. It provides a similar environment as standard Java environment. J2MEs components programming includes the Spotlet programming for PDA, and the MIDlet programming for Java phone. In addition, along with the XML, J2ME can also provide the XMIDlet programming for dynamic downloading and execution of XML-based applications for PDA and Java phones.

Applying multi-sensory learning model with mobile handheld devices to pervasive learning

The objective of this paper is to provide a personalized multi-sensory learning model with mobile handheld learning devices to enhance pervasive learning. This paper distinguishes itself by solving several challenges that the current mobile learning research is facing and unsolved. Our research consists of three phases: Phase one is to develop an ontology and agent based knowledge network framework with content management mechanism for learning content structure, description, representation, retrieval, reuse, revise, retain, exchange and sharing. Phase two is to develop intelligent mobile handheld learning devices with universal access mechanism with personalized learning experience for adaptive and seamless pervasive learning. Phase three is to develop a multi-sensory learning system with compelling examples of pen based, annotation based, context driven, and location based learning service and applications for pervasive learning.

Adding semantic retrieving concept model into the discussion board of learning community by using topic maps

The activities in learning community include posting easy questions or complex problems, sharing experiences and knowledge and pedagogical activities. Learners usually post questions when they have problems understanding some concepts. Information is usually accumulated at a rapid pace in learning communities. However, if information is not organized orderly and systematically, it will be difficult for community members and Webmasters to find relevant information to browse, to respond to, and to learn. This study proposes the semantic retrieving concept model (SRCM) which improves the efficiency of searching and learning tasks. When learners need information of certain topics, they simply enter conceptual keyword in the semantic conceptual search textbox. The content-based retrieval mechanism of SRCM will then retrieve the relevant discussion messages and e-contents from the content repositories.