Saleh Alhazbi

Measuring the complexity of component-based system architecture

This paper proposes a graph-based metric to evaluate complexity of the architecture by analyzing the dependencies between components of the system. Measuring the complexity is helpful during analyzing, testing, and maintaining the system. This measurement could direct the process of improvement and reengineering work. A complexity measure could also be used as a predictor of the effort that is needed to maintain the system. In component-based systems, functionalities are not performed within one component. Components communicate and share information in order to provide system functionalities. In our approach, to capture system architecture, we borrow Lis model, component dependency graph (CDG).

Security oriented service composition: A framework

This paper argues that in order to address the challenges of security compatibility checking between the clients software and the service software in a service oriented software environment, the followings have to be achieved: (i) services need to be specified together with their security policies along with importance of stakeholders (users and providers), and (ii) the security compatibility needs to be analyzed in terms of security requirements and capabilities of the interacting systems at the time of service composition. With these objectives in mind, this paper proposes a framework for security compatibility of service consumptions. The framework is based on a method of abstracting security policies using an ontology, and a rule based technique for automatically checking the security compatibility between interacting software systems.

An assistive computerized system for children with moderate intellectual and learning disabilities

We aim in this project to develop a system for children with intellectual and learning disabilities that supports collaboration, data exploration, communication and creativity. The system offers specific tutorials on basic concepts. It can enhance the communications and learning capabilities of the children. The tutorial contents contains multimedia elements that help the children understand effectively the topics. An assessment component is being developed to evaluate the children understanding. Parents can also be involved in the learning process by adding some contents suitable to their children.

Modeling security importance and preferences of software services

This paper proposes a modeling framework on how to specify security preferences and importance of software services, and compute a quantifiable value. Our approach advocates for an automatic calculation of the results of compliances between users security preferences and the providers capabilities in terms of security properties.

Preference-based semantic matching of web service security policies

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Active Blended Learning to Improve Students’ Motivation in Computer Programming Courses: A Case Study

Difficulties faced by novice students in programming subjects have been a concern for researchers in computer science education since the early 1960s. Usually a programming module is taught in the first semester of a computer science curriculum, so such challenges affect student motivation and attitudes toward the entire discipline; some of them drop out of the field, and many of them continue but with fear of programming tasks in subsequent courses. Although the various difficulties of learning programming are caused by different reasons, motivating students represents an important factor that helps them overcome these challenges. In this chapter, we describe our case study of designing and implementing a blended learning environment to enhance student motivation in a computer programming course at Qatar University during the 2012 fall semester. The main objective was to actively engage students in the learning process inside and outside the classroom to enhance their motivation and improve their learning of computer programming. We have designed and implemented a blended learning environment that supports collaborative learning, provides a high level of interaction between learners and the instructor, provides students with timely feedback, and supports students’ reflective practice. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we compared the performance of students who were involved in this learning environment (the treatment group) to other students (the control group) who received the regular class experience. As an indirect assessment, we surveyed students in the treatment group to assess their attitudes about their experience. The results show that our approach has a positive impact on student motivation and performance.

Multi-Level Mediator-Based Technique for Classes Hot Swapping in Java Applications

It is software system nature to be updated over time; the usual way of updating software is to shut down the system and install the new version, then restart it. This poses problems for applications that have limited down-time. In this paper, we present an approach for building dynamic Java application where its classes can be updated while the program is running. Our approach is based on the features supported by Java language such as dynamic linking, class loader, and Java reflection

Cognition-based adaptive programming tutoring system

The most important potential of E-learning system is the ability to adapt based on learners status in order to support personalized learning. However, this requires using specific learners parameters as factors to control adaptation process, these include learning style, presentation preferences, and progress preference through the subject. This is paper presents our web-based tutoring system to support students learning of computer programming. The novelty of our system is using cognitive process levels in revised Blooms taxonomy as the factor of adaptation to learner progress, where system moves learner from simple levels to more complex ones.

Using flipped classroom approach to teach computer programming

Flipped classroom approach has been increasingly adopted in higher institutions. Although this approach has many advantages, there are also many challenges that should be considered. In this paper, we discuss the suitability of this approach to teach computer programming, and we report on our pilot experience of using this approach at Qatar University to teach one subject of computer programming course. It is found that students has positive attitude to this approach, it improves their learning. However, the main challenge was how to involve some of the students in online learning activities.

Reasoning About Policies in Security-Aware Service Discovery Using Answer Set Programming

In order to enable a secure interaction between dynamically discovered software services and the client’s application in a cooperative information system such as service oriented system, one of the pre-requisites is the reconciliation of service-specific security policies of all stakeholders. Existing service discovery research does not address the issue of enormous search space in finding security-aware services based on preferred security policy alternatives of the client of software services. In this paper, we propose an answer set programming (ASP) approach, drawn from the field of artificial intelligence (AI), to explore a viable solution of finding security-aware services for the client. We argue that the ASP approach can significantly reduce the search space and achieve great performance gains. We use ASP to: (i) specify security policies including expressing service-specific security preference weighting and importance scoring in quantifiable terms; and (ii) reason about the compliance between the...