Oskar Pettersson

On the role of software process modeling in software ecosystem design

Software Ecosystems (SECOs) have in recent years emerged as a promising approach for improved inter and intra organizational reuse and for reusability involving end-users in the software development process. Understanding the softwares role in a larger perspective and how it interconnects with stakeholders is key for progress in those directions. However, for SECOs, several theoretical and methodological gaps remain to be charted. This paper identifies one such gap, the need for precise process modeling. It elaborates on experiences gained from the analysis of a SECO for mobile learning and brings up several aspects and insights for this particular domain. The main contributions are an initial reference model for the mobile learning domain and an outline for an analysis method for domain specific SECOs.

On the Issue of Reusability and Adaptability in M-learning Systems

This paper presents a brief overview over some of the conceptual and technical issues associated with reusability and adaptability. The specific orientation of our efforts is oriented towards systems supporting Mobile Learning. The field of M-learning domain has during recent years been suffering from severe configuration problems caused by the plethora of mobile devices present on the market. This paper presents a conceptual architecture that has been conceived to remedy some of these issues. Furthermore, a possible instantiation of this architecture with self-adaptivity features is discussed and a first prototype implementation is presented. The notion of ecosystems is introduced, as we believe it is an important building block towards increasing the reusability of components and content in this field where composition is one of the major issues to be addressed.

Providing Flexibility in Learning Activities Systems by Exploiting the Multiple Roles of Mobile Devices

The wide adoption of mobile and wireless technologies allow for users to have access to learning resources and generate digital content at any location and time. An immediate implication of this latest trend is the need to create and deploy learning activity systems that offer a high level of flexibility. This flexibility can allow for the creation of adaptive activities, something highly required in dynamic learning environments such as those in the field of M-learning. Mobile devices can provide flexibility to activity systems by adapting their behavior on a context basis. To give an example of flexibility in the mobile device behavior, we present the FLexible Activity Client (FLAC). FLAC is a mobile application that allows the mobile device to switch from client-role to service-provider-role behavior. We describe our proposed architecture and its implementation and present the results of our initial tests.

Making Use of User-Generated Content and Contextual Metadata Collected during Ubiquitous Learning Activities

During the last years significant research efforts have been conducted looking at how to standardize digital educational content. Due to better connectivity and computational power of mobile devices, new opportunities have emerged for collecting user-generated data based on the context and the environment where the content has been generated. While metadata standards for learning objects such as IEEE LOM make it possible to annotate digital content with pre-defined metadata tags, the ability to store custom user-generated or contextual metadata is not yet fully supported. The need for developing a flexible solution to deal with these problems motivated the design of our activity controller system (ACS), a rapid prototyping system and a task manager, which interprets, reacts to and stores contextual metadata and content extracted during learning activities. This paper presents how ACS facilitates coordination and reusability of user generated data, which we believe is as a valuable feature compared with existing standards and initiatives.

Reusability and Interoperability in Mobile Learning: A Study of Current Practices

The amount of software developed for educational purposes has steadily increased over the last years. A growing subset of these developments is intended for use in mobile devices. This puts special requirements on implementations that need to be overcome before mobile learning can be more widely adopted. In this paper we investigate how educational software development community can be encouraged to develop more sustainable and interoperable applications. This investigation is done by first surveying the different aspects of reuse to give a background and motivation. Then, a survey of current practice is performed. The survey provides initial insights into how reuse and interoperability is used in authentic practice. Findings indicate that there is much to be done in terms of interoperability and reuse for mobile learning applications. The result of this study confirms that two of the main challenges that developer of educational software in general and mobile learning in particular face is interoperability and reuse. Finally, some directions to overcome these challenges are proposed.

Pinetree: A Learning Content Repository Based on Semantic Web Technologies

During the last few years, mobile devices such as cellular phones and PDAs have become sophisticated tools for creating digital content. Moreover, their built-in or attachable sensor capabilities make it possible to derive metadata that denote the context of the user. The challenge of annotating digital content with contextual metadata is a central part of our current research efforts and the main rationale for the development of Pinetree. Pinetree is a learning content repository based on Semantic Web technologies. The aim of the article is to explore the utility of using RDF (Resource Description Framework) as a data model in a learning content repository. We describe the different components of Pinetree and illustrate its use in a specific learning scenario. Our initial results indicate that a learning content repository based on RDF can be a flexible solution for digital content storage in terms of metadata expressivity, interoperability and data distribution.

Designing Pervasive Games to Support University Studies in Media Technology

New media technology students at university face many challenges from social to pedagogical when they start academic studies. One of the programs initial goals for these new students is to introduce them to some of the key social web services that they will need to use for their schoolwork. The use of pervasive games to reach this specific purpose may help new students acclimate to these challenges. This paper presents a pervasive game that helps teams of students work together with new technologies to solve a mystery about a missing fictional professor. Our particular research interest relates to how pervasive games can be used to introduce social web technologies and support team building for a university courses. The game presented in this paper show promise as a tool to get new university students in media technology actively involved in exploring social media web services.

Utilizing Gesture Based Interaction for Supporting Collaborative Explorations of Visualizations in TEL

In this paper, we present our efforts related to the implementation of the prototype that utilizes gesture based interaction for supporting collaborative explorations of visualizations in technology-enhanced learning activities. The prototype enables the visualization of different types of geo-tagged content and sensor data collected using mobile devices. In order to test the novelty and interactivity of our prototype we conducted a user testing study involving university students. The results of this study indicate that participants experienced this prototype as easy to use, with an acceptable overall level of satisfaction. Outcomes from this study show that gesture based interaction become useful when it comes to collaborative explorations of visualizations for supporting learning activities.

A Survey of Modeling Approaches for Software Ecosystems

Software ecosystems is one promising strategy for organizations to find new market segments, new innovative value propositions creating new value streams. However, understanding internal and external actors, resources and relationships that could be leveraged in a SECO is critical for their strategic decisions. The consequence of mistakes may be costly failures that can force an organization to move out of a market. This paper describes a systematic mapping study that targets description of software ecosystems. Our conjecture is that adequate description support leads to modeling, which will improve information and in turn strategic decisions. The survey searches existing literature for description techniques and their application for comprehensive description.

Real-Time Interactive Visualization Aiding Pronunciation of English as a Second Language

Some studies have been reporting encouraging results concerning the possibilities of combining voice and its visual representation for language learning. Following this line of investigation this paper explores the potential impact of two distinct visualization styles for the learning of English pronunciation of syllables for non-native speakers: a) highlighting syllables and b) the visualization of the produced sound wave. In order to evaluate the benefits of the two different styles three distinct digital tool prototypes were created in order to test four study conditions. The conditions under evaluation were a) teaching syllables without the support of any digital tool, b) teaching using a prototype that highlighted the syllables under study, c) using a prototype that displayed the sound wave of the syllable to be learnt and d) a prototype that combined the functionality of b) and c). Results suggest that the combined approach seems to be as effective as the traditional classroom approach of teaching the syllables. However, more research is needed in order to consolidate the findings, being able to explore in more detail how is the learning process occurring and to what extend the tools developed can be integrated into classroom practice.