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Tech Report kmi-98-10 Abstract


Improving the quality of the student’s learning experience: an agent-based approach to on-line study guides
Techreport ID: kmi-98-10
Date: 1998
Author(s): Chris McKillop
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Study guides are a valuable resource for the distance education student. With the growing trend of putting courses on-line there an increase in the number of on-line study guides. This paper looks at how distance education students interact with their learning materials and considers ways of making this more engaging and effective by looking at the importance of affective responses. The use of an agent-based approach to on-line study guides is proposed as a way of achieving this. This approach can provide a more personal and conversational style through the use of voice and face which has been shown to be effective at engaging a student and producing a positive effect on the student’s perception of their learning experience as well as increasing performance outcomes. This paper argues that these findings should be applied to on-line study guides to improve the quality of the student’s learning experience.
 
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Future Internet is...


Future Internet
With over a billion users, today's Internet is arguably the most successful human artifact ever created. The Internet's physical infrastructure, software, and content now play an integral part of the lives of everyone on the planet, whether they interact with it directly or not. Now nearing its fifth decade, the Internet has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility in the face of ever increasing numbers of users, data volume, and changing usage patterns, but faces growing challenges in meetings the needs of our knowledge society. Globally, many major initiatives are underway to address the need for more scientific research, physical infrastructure investment, better education, and better utilisation of the Internet. Within Japan, USA and Europe major new initiatives have begun in the area.

To succeed the Future Internet will need to address a number of cross-cutting challenges including:

  • Scalability in the face of peer-to-peer traffic, decentralisation, and increased openness

  • Trust when government, medical, financial, personal data are increasingly trusted to the cloud, and middleware will increasingly use dynamic service selection

  • Interoperability of semantic data and metadata, and of services which will be dynamically orchestrated

  • Pervasive usability for users of mobile devices, different languages, cultures and physical abilities

  • Mobility for users who expect a seamless experience across spaces, devices, and velocities