Abstract This study focused on enriching collaborative learning through pedagogically scripted multiplayer games. Collaborative learning was examined in the synchronous discussions of small group problem-solving activities in face-to-face and virtual game settings. The theoretical approach is socio-cognitive and builds on the contextual and situated nature of learning. Interaction between group members in social situations is a key mechanism fostering students’ collaborative learning. In the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning the underlying aim is to stimulate and structure socially shared construction of knowledge and development of shared understanding among the collaborators. This thesis consisted of three empirical studies. The first study focused on analysing the macro-level elements of teacher education students’ face-to-face discussions in a context of an international web-based course. The focus of the second and third empirical studies was on how distributed collaboration can be enriched by scripting multiplayer game environments. The game environments were developed and tailored as part of the empirical studies. The main aim was to analyse small-group micro-level interactions and activities taking place during the game. Moreover, the particulars of a 3D voice-enhanced multiplayer game context for small-group shared collaborative activities were investigated. The focus of the last empirical study was on aspects of collaborative game activity and shared problem solving described from the perspective of individual players. The results indicated that the synchronous small-group discussions, on the macro-level, consisted of explaining, sharing knowledge, providing critiques, reflection, and joint engagement. The micro-level elements of the players’ discussions during the game were questions, content statements, social statements, suggestions, instructions or orders, encouragements, and responses. Both macro and micro level elements varied in random order during the discussion, forming a base for small-group discussion and joint problem-solving efforts. Not all problem-solving situations in the game data were shared, indicating that if shared collaborative activity was pursued, the scripting of the game tasks must require equal participation and teamwork during the game. The 3D game environment created a strong shared context for the distributed groups by engaging the players and reinforcing individual participation through the avatar activity. The findings of this thesis contribute to the future development of serious games and highlight the potential of multiplayer games as tools for supporting the social aspects of distributed teamwork. / Tiivistelmä Väitöstutkimus tarkastelee yhteisöllisen oppimisen rikastamista pedagogisesti vaiheistettujen virtuaalipeliympäristöjen avulla. Tutkimuksessa on analysoitu pienryhmien sosiaalista vuorovaikutusta luokkahuonekeskusteluissa ja puhevälitteisissä peliympäristöissä. Teoreettisesti tutkimus pohjautuu sosiokognitiiviseen käsitykseen oppimisesta, jonka mukaan sosiaaliset tilanteet voivat käynnistää yksilöissä oppimisen kannalta keskeisiä mekanismeja, kuten esimerkiksi selittämistä ja tiedon jakamista. Yhteisöllisen oppimisen ytimeksi katsotaan jaetun ymmärryksen rakentaminen sosiaalisessa vuorovaikutuksessa, mitä tietokoneavusteisen yhteisöllisen oppimisen tutkimuslinjassa pyritään tukemaan vaiheistamalla oppimisympäristöjä. Tutkimus koostuu kolmesta eri osatutkimuksesta, joista ensimmäisessä analysoitiin korkeakouluopiskelijoiden pienryhmäkeskustelua luokkahuonetilanteessa. Lähitapaamiset toimivat kurssilla hajautetun kansainvälisen verkkotyöskentelyn tukena. Toisessa osatutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin, voiko hajautettua yhteisöllistä oppimista rikastaa puhevälitteisen monenpelaajan peliympäristön avulla. Pelin tehtävät suunniteltiin ja vaiheistettiin yhteisöllistä toimintaa vaativiksi sekä jaetun ymmärryksen rakentamista tukeviksi. Analyysi keskittyi korkeakouluopiskelijoiden pelinaikaisen keskustelun ja ongelmanratkaisutilanteiden tarkasteluun. Kolmannen osatutkimuksen tavoitteena oli tutkia, mitä osatekijöitä työelämäkontekstista tulleet osallistujat joutuivat hallitsemaan puhevälitteisessä monenpelaajan pelissä. Tutkimusten video- ja haastatteluaineistot analysoitiin laadullisen sisällönanalyysin menetelmin. Tutkimustulokset osoittivat, että pienryhmän vuorovaikutus koostuu makrotasolla mm. selittämisestä, tiedon jakamisesta ja reflektoinnista. Mikrotasolla mm. kysymykset, toteamukset, auttaminen ja ehdottaminen vaihtelivat puheenvuoroittain ja muodostivat yhteisen toiminnan pohjan pienryhmän pelaamisessa. Kaikki ongelmanratkaisutilanteet pelin aikana eivät kuitenkaan olleet jaettuja. Tulokset osoittavat, että kun tavoitellaan aidosti yhteisöllisiä tilanteita, pelin tehtävät täytyy vaiheistaa niin, että ne vaativat kaikkien osallistumista ja pitävät ryhmää virtuaalisesti yhdessä. Tässä tutkimuksessa käytetyt peliympäristöt muodostivat hajautetuille ryhmille vahvan jaetun tilan ja virtuaalisten ihmishahmojen eli avatarien kautta osallistuminen vahvisti yksilöiden toimijuutta pienryhmän osana. Tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää hajautetun tiimityön kontekstissa sekä käyttää tukena tulevaisuuden virtuaalisten tiimipelien suunnittelussa.

[pt] Nos últimos anos, as linguagens de script ganharam muita importância em diversas áreas da computação. Uma das áreas onde essas linguagens ainda são pouco exploradas é na área de computação paralela. A computação paralela sempre foi fortemente associada a computação científica, mas recentemente ela ganhou uma nova importância com a popularização de processadores multi-core. Com esse crescimento se torna necessário o surgimento de novos paradigmas de programação paralela para facilitar o desenvolvimento e dinamizar as aplicações, e linguagens de script podem ser usadas para isso, trazendo dinamismo, simplicidade e flexibilidade às aplicações. Esta dissertação visa estudar um modelo híbrido de programação entre duas linguagens de programação, Lua e Charm plus plus. / [en] Recently, scripting languages have become very important in many fields of computer science. One area in which these languages have not been explored is paralel programming. Paralel programming has always been strongly associated with scientific usage, but recently, with the growth in popularity of multi core systems, it has gained a new field of action. With this change, the development of new programming paradigms of paralel programming become necessary in order to make development easier and applications more dynamic. Scripting languages may be used for this, bringing dynamics, flexibility and simplicity to aplications. This dissertation aims to study a hybrid programming model with two programming languages, Charm plus plus and Lua.

Epithelial tissues, one of the four primary tissue structures found in our human body, are known to comprise of tiny cells interconnected in a unique continuous pattern. In most cases, they serve a dual purpose of protecting the internal organs from physical damage, and at the same time, enable in facilitating inter-cellular activities and prevent pathogen break ins. While the tissue mechanics and its proliferation have been scrutinized to great detail, it is their geometric uniqueness, that has remained more or less unexplored. With an intent of doing the same, this thesis identifies and explores those geometric properties/parameters that have an influence on the micro structure’s homogenized and localized response. However, it does so by extracting the microstructures profile and representing its cell edges via three dimensional beam elements - hence the name, bio-inspired structures. The analysis is carried out by first developing a staggered Representative Volume Element (RVE)using finite elements, and identifying its appropriate size. The staggered assembly aids in minimizing boundary effects from creeping in, and at the same time, provides the requisite statistical homogeneity. This is followed by the geometry study. A wide range of epithelial geometries are considered for the study, ranging from completely isotropic skin models, to in plane anisotropic cuboidal structures and out of plane anisotropic stratified geometries. The effects of orientation, relative density and edge length are extracted and studied in great detail. It is observed that cell edges initial orientation has a direct dependence on the particle distribution, whereas the change in orientation is largely dependent on the deformation the microstructure is subjected to. Relative density is documented to show a direct correlation to a materials homogenized response i.e. larger the relative density, greater is the microstructures stiffness and homogenized stress response to the same deformation. Edge length, on the other hand is observed to showcase a downward trend on the cell edge’s axial stress. On average, in any kind of distribution and any kind of deformation, smaller cell edges are known to showcase larger stresses, as compared to the larger cell edges.

Both for its simplicity and efficiency to search for the most critical security vulnerabilities that could exist within a web application, a web vulnerability scanner is a popular tool among any company that develops a web application. With the existence of many different scanners that are available to use, one is unlikely the same as the other and the results attained when evaluating these scanners in relation to each other are often not the same. In this thesis, three different open source web vulnerability scanners are evaluated and analysed based on their ability to find SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. The scanners were used on several open source deliberately broken web applications that acted as benchmarks. The benchmarks that caused much diversity in the results from the scanners were further investigated. When analysing the scanners based on the results, both the actual results were analysed on what caused the diversity but most of all the source code of the scanners were explored and investigated. It could be found that the techniques used by the scanners were essentially similar but contained several minor differences that caused the diversity in the results. Most differences were dependant on the variation of the predefined payloads injected by the scanners, but it could also be found that the approaches used to determine if a vulnerability was detected or not could vary as well. The finalised result concluded in a report that reveals and demonstrates the different approaches that any web vulnerability scanner could use and the limitations of them.

This work presents a design and implementation of graphic user interfaces for board games. The objects of the investigation were various types of board games and graphic effects for virtual board game scene. We have developed a user interface design for different games. In the following sections the OpenGL ES library and its application to the Android platform are characterized. We explored the possibility of implementation in the native code. We have developed a system for plug-ins that allows implementing game logic in scripting language and defining the virtual scene for board game in XML language.

In recent years, the interest in Augmented Reality (AR) applications for entertainment and productivity has grown. One company exploring this technology is LAZER WOLF STUDIOS, the developers behind Thrymd: an AR-driven board games platform powered by the Unity engine.  This paper details the development of a visual scripting framework, meant to provide end users with a means of developing their own games for the platform, without significant programming or background knowledge required. A graph-based visual language was implemented in a custom Unity editor window, in order to maintain a familiar and consistent feel for users. The graph consists of a series of branching, interconnected nodes which pass data in-between each other, and execute in succession. The graph is serialized as a Unity asset, and can easily be interacted with through regular C# scripts.  A small number of nodes were implemented, but for the system to be viable, more are needed. For that reason, extensibility was a core ideal; creating new node types must be fast and painless. As with any script layer, performance is generally worse than compiled code. Further work is needed to improve user experience. / Intresset för användandet av Augmenterad Verklighet (AR) för underhållning och produktivitetssyften har ökat på senare tid. LAZER WOLF STUDIOS är utvecklarna bakom Thrymd, en AR-driven brädspelsplattform byggd i spelmotorn Unity.  Denna rapport dokumenterar utvecklingsprocessen av ett visuellt skriptramverk byggt med avsikt att låta slutanvändare utveckla sina egna spel till plattformen utan större förkunskapskrav. Ett graf-baserat visuellt skriptspråk implementerades i en skräddarsydd editormiljö inuti Unity, för att bibehålla en bekant och konsekvent användarupplevelse. Grafen består av en serie förgrenande, sammankopplade noder som skickar data mellan varann och exekveras i sekvens. Grafen sparas som en resurs på hårddisken och är lätt att interagera med genom traditionella C#-skript i Unity.  Ett mindre antal noder implementerades, men fler krävs för att systemet ska vara brukbart. Av detta skäl designades språket med vidareutveckling i åtanke, då det måste vara enkelt att skapa nya noder. Som med de flesta skriptspråk är prestandan överlag sämre än kompilerad kod. Ytterligare arbete krävs för att förbättra användarupplevelsen.

This thesis deals with design of scripting language, especially specified for effective image processing. Introduction of this thesis is focused on studying and also appropriation of methodology of compilers and interpreters design, include their following application in design of the scripting language and as well its interpreter. Another point of my work is showing the methods of design and implementation of the interpreter including automated methods used in the design of the implemented program. Next part deals with description of structure and implementation of the designed program, intended for generating compiler of any language which is described in input of this program. The conclusion of this work is more detailing description of the scripting language design; its implementation is based on the methods mentioned before.

No description available.

[pt] Linguagens dinamicamente tipadas, tais como Lua, não usam tipos estáticos em favor de simplicidade e exibilidade, porque a ausência de tipos estáticos significa que programadores não precisam se preocupar em abstrair tipos que devem ser validados por um verificador de tipos. Por outro lado, linguagens estaticamente tipadas ajudam na detecção prévia de diversos bugs e também ajudam na estruturação de programas grandes. Tais pontos geralmente são vistos como duas vantagens que levam programadores a migrar de uma linguagem dinamicamente tipada para uma linguagem estaticamente tipada, quando os pequenos scripts deles evoluem para programas complexos. Sistemas de tipos opcionais nos permitem combinar tipagem dinâmica e estática na mesma linguagem, sem afetar a semântica original da linguagem, tornando mais fácil a evolução de código tipado dinamicamente para código tipado estaticamente. Desenvolver um sistema de tipos opcional para uma linguagem dinamicamente tipada é uma tarefa desafiadora, pois ele deve ser o mais natural possível para os programadores que já estão familiarizados com essa linguagem. Neste trabalho nós apresentamos e formalizamos Typed Lua, um sistema de tipos opcional para Lua, o qual introduz novas características para tipar estaticamente alguns idiomas e características de Lua. Embora Lua compartilhe várias características com outras linguagens dinamicamente tipadas, em particular JavaScript, Lua também possui várias características não usuais, as quais não estão presentes nos sistemas de tipos dessas linguagens. Essas características incluem funções com aridade flexível, atribuições múltiplas, funções que são sobrecarregadas no número de valores de retorno e a evolução incremental de registros e objetos. Nós discutimos como Typed Lua tipa estaticamente essas características e também discutimos nossas decisões de projeto. Finalmente, apresentamos uma avaliação de resultados, a qual obtivemos ao usar Typed Lua para tipar código Lua existente. / [en] Dynamically typed languages such as Lua avoid static types in favor of simplicity and exibility, because the absence of static types means that programmers do not need to bother with abstracting types that should be validated by a type checker. In contrast, statically typed languages provide the early detection of many bugs, and a better framework for structuring large programs. These are two advantages of static typing that may lead programmers to migrate from a dynamically typed to a statically typed language, when their simple scripts evolve into complex programs. Optional type systems allow combining dynamic and static typing in the same language, without affecting its original semantics, making easier this code evolution from dynamic to static typing. Designing an optional type system for a dynamically typed language is challenging, as it should feel natural to programmers that are already familiar with this language. In this work we present and formalize the design of Typed Lua, an optional type system for Lua that introduces novel features to statically type check some Lua idioms and features. Even though Lua shares several characteristics with other dynamically typed languages such as JavaScript, Lua also has several unusual features that are not present in the type system of these languages. These features include functions with exible arity, multiple assignment, functions that are overloaded on the number of return values, and the incremental evolution of record and object types. We discuss how Typed Lua handles these features and our design decisions. Finally, we present the evaluation results that we achieved while using Typed Lua to type existing Lua code.

No description available.