Roberto Barchino

Knowledge representation for diagnosis of care problems through an expert system: Model of the auto-care deficit situations

The caregiver role strain is today an increasing problem because of the population aging; moreover, its diagnosis is highly difficult. In this article, we summarize the design of an Expert System for the diagnosis of this health problem. The Expert System Knowledge Base is composed by a set of production rules written in classic bi-valued logic and by a set of potential facts. In order to build this Knowledge Base it has been necessary to design previously a Model of the problem treatment. The Expert System Inference Engine uses Grobner Bases and Normal Form to obtain the diagnosis from the information stored in the Knowledge Base. Furthermore, a Graphic Users Interface has been implemented to make easier the access to the System by all kinds of users.

A new sequencing method in Web-based education

The process of creating e-learning contents using reusable learning objects (LOs) can be broken down in two sub-processes: LOs finding and LO sequencing. Sequencing is usually performed by instructors, who create courses targeting generic profiles rather than personalized materials. This paper proposes an evolutionary approach to automate this latter problem while, simultaneously, encourages reusability and interoperability by promoting standards employment. A model that enables automated curriculum sequencing is proposed. By means of interoperable competency records and LO metadata, the sequencing problem is turned into a constraint satisfaction problem. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) agents are designed, built and tested in real and simulated scenarios. Results show both approaches succeed in all test cases, and that they handle reasonably computational complexity inherent to this problem, but PSO approach outperforms GA.

A System for Adaptation of Educational Contents to Learners and their Mobile Device

In this paper we propose a system that allows to adapt educational contents to learners, based on the knowledge of a learner who is conducting the training through his mobile device, contents will also be tailored to the features of the device and to the context where the learner is at the present moment.

Evaluating Simple Query Interface Compliance in Public Repositories

Standards and specifications widely accepted and used lay the foundations to enable and facilitate the interoperability among systems, and the software maintenance and reuse, especially within the scope of learning objects’ search systems. One of these standards is the SQI (Standard Query Interface) specification by the European Committee for Standardization in which many search systems, including public ones, are based. This paper analyzes the degree of compliance with this specification by a significant number of learning objects repositories.

Assessment design: A step towards interoperability

The assessment in e‐learning systems is a basic element to successfully complete any formative action. In this article we present a generic, flexible, interoperable and reusable language for design assessments, and its implementation in the EDVI Learning Management System. This language is based on XML and we have used XML Schema technology. We also describe the language attributes required to set the assessment plan based on our practical experience in e‐learning courses. The main purpose of this language is to make the assessment design interoperable among systems in a simple and efficient way. An adequate implementation will also reduce the time required to configure assessment activities, simplifying and automating them.

Developing Distributed Repositories of Learning Objects

A repository or digital storage of educative elements is a collection of resources (learning objects) accessible through a communication network. It is not necessary to have a previous knowledge about the collection containing the structure of the resources or only the metadata describing them, together with a reference to locate it (IMS DRI, 2003). The aim of a repository is to facilitate the reusability of educational resources, providing access to the stored resources to learning management systems (LMS); learning content management system (LCMS); content portals (for an instance: searching systems of digital libraries, World Wide Web searching, etc.); or any application/software developed to access to learning objects. Digital repositories, in the broadest sense, are used to store any sort of digital material. However, digital repositories for learning objects are much more complex in terms of what to store and how to do it. The purpose of a digital learning object repository is not just to store and distribute learning objects, but to allow them to be shared by different users and, above all, to make it easier to reuse them in different training activities (figure 1). From the users’ point of view, these repositories have the advantage of having access to the content stored in them. To make this possible, the content must be gathered through certain procedures, rules and standards whose implementation is intended to promote the reusability of learning objects. Moreover, the repository itself must follow a series of specifications and standards which enable to browse the content it stores and facilitate interoperability with other repositories. Most repositories are usually autonomous, that is, they work as portals that can be accessed through a Web-based interface, providing a search mechanism and a list of categories to conduct the search. However, it is becoming increasingly common the possibility of making federated searches in distributed repositories from the original repository. Some examples of this kind of search can be found in repositories such as those set out in table 1. In this way, it is possible to access to different repositories from the learning management platform, preview their contents and even download and incorporate them into a course.

Automatic E-learning contents composition by using gap analysis techniques

A goal of e-learning is to increase efficiency by precisely identifying the training a student needs, and providing that training in the context of day to day activities of the students [1]. This paper describes how the use of IA algorithms can be utilized to automatically generate customized learning contents on elearning environments. On top of that, we also propose the inclusion in the whole process of digital rights, as in our opinion, its a way to make up for contents creators and to encourage them to create better, more useful materials.

Competency-Based Intelligent Curriculum Sequencing Using Particle Swarms

As a part of many e-learning initiatives, a set of learning units must be arranged in a particular order to meet the learnerspsila requirements. This process is known as sequencing and it is typically performed by instructors, who create wide-public ordered series rather than learner personalized sequences. This paper proposes an innovative intelligent technique for learning object automated sequencing using particle swarms. E-learning standards are promoted in order to ensure interoperability. Competencies are used to define relations among learning objects within a sequence, so that the sequencing problem turns into a permutation problem and a particle swarm optimization algorithm can be applied to solve it. Results demonstrate that the new agent succeeds and it shows a good performance in real and tests scenarios.

A Proposal to Improve the Simple Query Interface (SQI) of Learning Objects Repositories

This paper proposes to improve the Simple Query Interface (SQI), designed to query learning object repositories, modifying a few existing methods to generate new ones. Replacement is not intended, instead, our proposal is to create new methods that incorporate several enhancements in order to enable compatibility with currently compliant systems that use the old methods. Besides, new methods are also proposed aiming at improving the interface as well as at providing compatibility with the Simple Publishing Querying (SPI) specification. With these improvements SQI specification will perform its task in a more structured and efficient manner.

A multidisciplinary computer science master program

This paper presents the University of Alcala attempt to join computer science and information engineering with other fields (business, law, pedagogy, nursery and humanities) in a Masters Program. The main objective of this approach is to attract graduate students to computer science offering them an alternative way to join its own knowledge and competencies with those in computing skills which are closely related.