There has been little research on assessment of learning management systems (LMS) within educational organizations as both a web-based learning system for e-learning and as a supportive tool for blended learning environments. This study proposes a conceptual e-learning assessment model, HELAM (Hexagonal e-Learning Assessment Model) suggesting a multi-dimensional approach for LMS evaluation via six dimensions: (1) system quality, (2) service quality, (3) information (content) quality, (4) learner perspective, (5) instructor quality, and (6) supportive issues. A survey instrument based on HELAM has been developed and applied to 374 learners. This sample consists of students at both undergraduate and graduate levels who are users of a web-based learning management system, U-Link, at Brunel University, UK and NetClass LMS at METU, Turkey. The survey instrument has been tested for content validity, reliability, and criterion-based predictive validity. The explanatory factor analysis shows that each of the six dimensions of the proposed model had a significant effect on the learners&amp / #8223 / perceived satisfaction. Confirmatory factor analyses used to assess the number of factors and the loadings of variables. The results of confirmatory factor analyses were overlapped with the proposed model. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) statistical analysis was used to validate the research model. The analytical results strongly support the appropriateness of the proposed model in evaluating LMSs through learners&amp / #8223 / satisfaction. Additionally, individual case results were presented with descriptive statistics, Pearson&amp / #8223 / s Product Correlations outputs. Findings of this research will be valuable for both academics and practitioners of e-learning systems. The presented statistical results highlighted the importance of supposing a multidimensional analytical approach for e-learning system success evaluation. The proposed model provided several implications for e-learning effectiveness evaluation.

Business process modeling is utilized by organizations for defining and reengineering their business processes. On the other hand, software requirements analysis activities are performed for determining the system boundaries, specifying software requirements using system requirements and resolving conflicts between requirements. From this point of view, these two activities are considered in different disciplines. An organization requiring its business processes to be defined and supported with information systems would benefit from performing business process modeling and requirements analysis concurrently. In this study, an approach enabling concurrent execution of business process modeling and requirements analysis is developed. The approach includes two business process modeling notations adapted to the research needs, a process defining the steps for implementing the approach and the requirements generation tool that generates natural language specification documents by using business process models. Within this study, two case studies are introduced / one describing the development of the approach and the other exploring if the total efficiency of performing business process modeling and requirements analysis activites would be increased by using the approach.

There is an increasing trend towards object detection from aerial and satellite images. Most of the widely used object detection algorithms are based on local features. In such an approach, first, the local features are detected and described in an image, then a representation of the images are formed using these local features for supervised learning and these representations are used during classification . In this thesis, Harris and SIFT algorithms are used as local feature detector and SIFT approach is used as a local feature descriptor. Using these tools, Bag of Visual Words algorithm is examined in order to represent an image by the help of histograms of visual words. Finally, SVM classifier is trained by using positive and negative samples from a training set. In addition to the classical bag of visual words approach, two novel extensions are also proposed. As the first case, the visual words are weighted proportional to their importance of belonging to positive samples. The important features are basically the features occurring more in the object and less in the background. Secondly, a principal component analysis after forming the histograms is processed in order to remove the undesired redundancy and noise in the data, reduce the dimension of the data to yield better classifying performance. Based on the test results, it could be argued that the proposed approach is capable to detecting a number of geo-spatial objects, such as airplane or ships, for a reasonable performance.

Significant developments in microprocessor and sensor technology make wirelessly connected small computing devices widely available / hence they are being used frequently to collect data from the environment. In this study, we construct a framework in order to extract high level information in an environment containing such pervasive computing devices. In the framework, raw data originating from wireless sensors are collected using an event driven system and converted to simple events for transmission over a network to a central processing unit. We also utilize complex event processing approach incorporating temporal constraints, aggregation and sequencing of events in order to define complex events for extracting high level information from the collected simple events. We develop a prototype using easily accessible hardware and set it up in a classroom within our university. The results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, ease of deployment and successful application of the complex event processing framework.

It is widely believed and empirically shown that component reuse improves both the quality and productivity of software development. This brings the necessity of a graphical editor to model the projects by using components. A graphical editor was implemented for the development of Component Oriented software development. The editor facilitates modeling efforts through application of the graphical modeling language COSEML. Both design patterns and software components have come to play important roles in software development. The correlation between software components and design patterns is apparent. In the design phase of the projects design patterns are used widely both in component and object oriented projects. Design patterns can be used as super components in component-based development . Software reuse, software components, design patterns, use of design patterns in component-based development, and component architectures are studied in details to address the need for the approach. COSE modeling activity starts with the decomposition of the target system into building blocks in a top-down order. Next, interfaces between these blocks are defined. If required design patterns can be added to model as super components.

In the last decades, the rapid change and prevalent use of technology are concerning, as they induced effects which mainly altered various encompassing contexts like consumer market dynamics and product development processes. Evidently, these transformations also affect the way users interact with products. It is observed that, technological novelties are applied in the competitive market as a tool for product differentiation. In addition, the rapid development of these technologies is a dominating factor on shortening product lifecycles. Resulting from these two factors, implementing latest technologies in new products is interpreted by producers as an absolute way of achieving market success. Consequently, most of the products in everyday life are designed with a primary aim to implement latest technological advances, without appropriate consideration of user requirements and characteristics. The phenomenon has negative consequences on product usability. This study basically examines the usability problems that are related with digital technology impelementations in consumer products. The evaluations are based on the contexts such as: changes in contemporary market conditions with the effects of the recent technological developments, technology-driven approaches in product development processes and the transformative consequences of digital technology applications on user-product interaction. Literature surveys are employed as method. Finally, interaction characteristics of digital products and the contexts in which they are used are evaluated and it is argued that, the usability problems are due to the deficiency in evaluations of user characteristics and requirements during the product development processes, in general terms.

The location where crime events occur is an important factor in the analysis of crime. It is not only important where a crime incident takes place but also the characteristics of those places and the environment in which incident occurs. Thus, examination of spatial data such as street networks, parcel information, school locations, commercial and residential zoning, is imperative for effective crime analysis, crime prevention and police activities. Using variables, relating to five incident types as burglary, auto, pick pocket, usurp and murder, which are recorded by the police in 2003 and including the information of where and when crime incident occurs, this thesis attempts to analyze the high-incident areas and the relationship between these incidents and land uses for two important police precincts of &Ccedil / ankaya district of Ankara / Centre of &Ccedil / ankaya Police Station Zone and Bah&ccedil / elievler Police Station Zone. The aim of the study is to improve a methodology for the determination of the effects of land use variables on the distribution of crime incidents. The study applies some methods related to the spatial data analysis which can be also integrated with Geographic Information Systems. In the study, in order to identify the current pattern of the incidents, kernel estimation method is found as the best method while Nearest Neighbor Hierarchical Clustering method is preferred to analyze what land uses are prone to incidents. In order to determine the properties of the relationships between land use and incidents correlation calculations are performed. At the end, the potential crime incident areas are determined by referring these relationships with GIS functions.

Spatial Decision Making as a branch of decision making science deals with geographically related data in order to achieve complex spatial decision problems. Fuzzy set theory is one of the methods that can be used to come up with these types of problems. On the other hand, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is one of the most powerful tools that we can use to accomplish spatial decision problems. Selection of the suitable site or land-use for the real estate is also a spatial decision making problem. When we consider the initial dynamics of the suitably located property from the point of view of value and potential we observe that the &ldquo / good location&rdquo / is the dominating factor. This study reports on the development of a kind of decision support system for locational suitability of settlements that integrates the fuzzy set (FZ) theory, a rule-based system (RBS) and GIS. This study is thought as the assistant for the property managers that are buyers and sellers. It can function as the property consultant for the buyers when they are looking for a property to buy and also it helps the real estate agencies to sell their properties. On the other hand, different scenarios of the potential areas according to the different user&rsquo / s preferences are depicted and they are joined and compared with the results of the vulnerability to earthquake hazards&rsquo / of the same area. Odunpazari - Eskisehir area is selected for implementation of the case study because of the data availability. As a result of this study, it can be said that most suitable property changes depending on the people&rsquo / s preferences. In addition, it is seen that most of the buildings that are locationally suitable are highly vulnerable to the earthquake hazards.