Pedro Sá Silva

Simulation, Games and Challenges: From Schools to Enterprises

In the last decades simulation has been widely used for training and education. Traditionally used on military and medicine education, history shows that analyzing systems through simulation models reveal to be an interesting, safe, few-resources consuming and less disruptive with the real system. Students can experiment and test their knowledge in the simulators, this is, can learn by doing. In order to increase the simulation interactivity and competition spirit, games were added, generating a new concept: simulation games. Business world sees this technique as an opportunity to improve professionals’ skills at low cost. This paper discusses the simulation, games and challenges contribution in schools and enterprises.

Simulation – Concepts and Applications

Simulation in last decades has been widely used to analyze the impact of different scenarios in several areas like, for instance, health, military, business, and many others. When well used, it is an excellent tool to analyze alternative actions and to anticipate their impact, in order to rationalize the spending of resources. This paper introduces and resumes some of the main concepts of simulation, identifying and describing: systems; models; entities and attributes; resources; contexts of use; and, in particularly, the discrete-event simulation.

Simulation in Information Systems: Potential of the Vulnerability Theory

Systems simulation has been widely used in the last decades in order to analyze the impact of different scenarios in several areas, and its application to information systems in no exception. Analyzing information systems through simulation models is simultaneously much more affordable; it is required a smaller amount of resources and it is less disruptive with the real system. Since information systems are becoming a cornerstone for our society, a failure in these systems can have a huge impact. The theory of vulnerability identifies failures in which small damage can have disproportionate impact consequences in terms of the functionality of the whole system. This paper discusses the use of the theory of vulnerability in information system simulation.

Collaborative Risk Management in Software Projects

Risk Management in software projects has been increasingly its importance and value, being pointed as an important basis of project success. However, many projects are still carried out without giving importance to this knowledge area. This work discusses some of the main aspects of Risk Management and introduces the concept of collaborative work in risk management. It is presented a work-in-progress that aims to contribute to a better understanding of the different attitudes towards risk and the impact that this may have on risk assessment.

Using Simulation for Enhanced Accounting Learning: A Case Study

The increasing focus of government institutions, such as the Tax Administration or Social Security, e-government has introduced a new paradigm that is the obligation of fulfilling obligations to these institutions through online channels. In the case of tax compliance by businesses, there is another requirement, only authorized persons, such as chartered certified accountants, can interact with the system of e-government. The latter requirement precludes the students of accounting and business management, some of them future chartered certified accountants, to get to know the system. This inability lead to the idea of ??creating applications simulators that mimic the official e-government applications for use in educational environment. This paper presents the developed VAT form submission process simulator and a case study of its application in Coimbra Institute of Accounting and Administration ISCAC to assess its effectiveness in practice. The results of experimentation show that simulators of official e-government applications, such as VAT Simulator, are extremely helpful in the process of learning e-government official tools, without taking risks.

Open source operating system for students: EOS Project

The Education Operating Systems (EOS) Project is a free, customized Operating System with essential features for undergraduate students of Coimbra College of Education. Based on Linux Ubuntu OS, the EOS Project has pre-installed the necessary software needed throughout the course, new Graphical User Interface and has developed USB and Live-CD distributions to simplify the installation process. Extensive formal documentation and video tutorials were developed to improve the users experience.