BAsCET est un système multi-agents à « blackboard », fondé sur l'émergence de concepts dans un modèle dynamique et inspiré de COPYCAT. Pour éviter un raisonnement déterministe unique limitant sa<br />créativité il adapte son comportement en fonction de la solution courante. Nous l'avons appliqué à la reconnaissance automatique de la structure logique (des champs) de références bibliographiques dans les articles scientifiques (en format uniquement physique, c'est-à-dire en PostScript). Le modèle, appelé Réseau de Concepts, s'apparentant à la fois aux réseaux sémantiques et aux réseaux de neurones, est construit automatiquement à partir d'une base de références BIBTeX. Le système utilise les co-occurrences entre les termes des références pour rapprocher dans le modèle ceux qui sont conceptuellement voisins. Le principe de l'analogie est utilisé sur les références de la base : quand le système rencontre une référence inconnue, il fait l'analogie avec la partie physique de la base et essaye de proposer une solution correspondante. Les résultats obtenus, bien que modérés (65,5% de reconnaissance), laissent augurer des résultats encore meilleurs, après optimisation du système.

The study explored the faculty adoption and use of a Blackboard at a community college in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. A cross-sectional survey design was constructed through the lens of Rogers’s Perceived Attributes of Innovations and Chickering and Ehrman’s Implementing Seven Principles: Technology as a Lever to investigate perceptions and opinions on faculty members’ use of Blackboard in their courses. The survey was piloted, modified and deployed to a population of 932 central Kentucky community college faculty who were recruited to participate in the online survey. Descriptive demographic items (gender, age, highest degree attained, years of teaching experience, employment status, and category of instruction) were cross-tabulated with users and nonusers of Blackboard. An additional cross-tabulation was performed on faculty who did and did not teach online. A Rasch analysis with Differential Item Functioning (DIF) was used to evaluate responses to the perceived attributes and opinions about the use of Blackboard. The Rasch model was employed since the model assumes that each person is characterized by ability, that each item of the survey is characterized by difficulty and that the results of differences in the probabilities of items and responses follow along a line. Misfit of items and faculty did occur and quality control measures were applied to the collected data. A Z-Residual table for the dichotomous items was applied to remove responses that were extreme or greater than 2 ZSTD. An Outfit plot for polytomous items was utilized to remove faculty responses above 3 ZSTD. Some items were determined to be redundant according to the Wright maps and Infit/Outfit tables. The results indicated 2 or 3 levels of discrimination in person reliability and an item separation that allowed an analysis of groups. Rogers’s perceived characteristics that persuade people to adopt a new innovation were indicated as differences between users and nonusers of Blackboard. In contrast to a previous study, those faculty who responded to the survey with 0-1 years of teaching experience had the greatest ratio of nonusers to users. Those respondents who associated their teaching to categories of pre-college and language had more nonusers than users of Blackboard. An overall theme where nonusers agreed more than users was the lack of seeing Blackboard, observing how to use Blackboard and not being able to properly try Blackboard. But users should also be encouraged to expand their use of Blackboard. The majority of users employed: syllabus, announcements, full grade center, course copy, and test and survey pool, but less than half who responded as users employed: discussion board, course calendar, and performance dashboard which may lead to increased communication between the faculty and students. The information obtained from the survey should be utilized when developing professional development activities to encourage Blackboard adoption and use. By studying the adoption and utilization of Blackboard by faculty through the lens of Rogers, the study highlighted differences in the characteristics that persuade faculty to use Blackboard. Through consistent utilization of course management systems, such as Blackboard, the hope is that communication between students and faculty will be enhanced which will ultimately help students to grow, develop and learn.

This thesis presents the design and analysis of Spasiba, a context-aware mobile advisor. We argue that current context-aware mobile applications exhibit significant flaws with respect to (1) limited use of context information, (2) incomplete or irrelevant content generation, and (3) low usability. The proposed model attempts to tackle these limitations by advancing the usage and manipulation of context information, automating the back-end systems in terms of self-management and seamless extensibility, and shifting the logic away from the client side. A distinguishing characteristic of Spasiba is the proactive approach to notifying the user of information of interest. In this proactive approach, the user subscribes to the service and receives content updates as the context changes. This proposed model is realised in a proof-of-concept prototype that uses a Nokia Web Runtime widget as the client application. The widget, which sports an elegant, touch-optimised interface, collects multiple context parameters to deliver high-quality results. The server-side architecture employs the publish/subscribe paradigm for managing the active users and Comet—for proactively notifying the clients of updated information of interest. IRS-III, a Semantic Web Services broker, handles the process of content generation. The prototype employs nine data sources, seven of which are open API web services and two of which are regular web pages, to deliver diverse and complete results. A simple autonomic element, implemented with the help of aspect-oriented programming, ensures partial self-management of the back-end systems. Spasiba is evaluated by means of a case study that involves a tourist couple visiting Victoria. The application assists the tourist couple with finding attractions, relevant stores, and places serving food.

Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 33-43).

Thesis (Master of Education (Education)--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2008 / This research aims to establish the relationship between language acquisition for isiXhosa as an additional language and the use of e-learning as well as the effect that such an approach will have on the students of the target group. The researcher selected a group of students from those whom she taught, and used e-learning by means of the Blackboard platform in the teaching process. A B-Ed 3 group was identified as target group out of which six candidates were randomly selected as case studies in order to monitor the process of implementation and usage. In an attempt to obtain underlying and rich information, they each maintained a journal about the e-learning usage, completed two questionnaires and attended a focus group discussion. These sources of information supplied data which reflected the students’ true feelings about e-learning. The lecturer, who had no previous experience of e-learning, attended e-learning courses and also from her perspective, noted the process of implementation in a journal. E-learning tasks were used as support to subject content which were used in the classroom. The students were therefore expected to attend all classes and complete the e-learning tasks outside of class time. The research determined that e-learning has the potential to be applied successfully to additional language teaching. Both the lecturer and the students experienced the process positively.

No description available.

Management professionals at many colleges are transitioning to new learning management systems (LMS), such as Moodle, for reasons such as lower costs, greater outreach, and student preference. Transitioning to a new LMS may result in faculty problems with learning a new technology platform in addition to teaching. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact that an LMS transition had on faculty attitudes, experiences, and workload. The conceptual framework of the study was the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and the diffusion of innovation theory. A phenomenological design was employed with a purposeful sample of 13 faculty who had transitioned a course from Blackboard to Moodle during 2009-2013. Interview data were analyzed through open coding, resulting in 7 emergent themes: time, stability, usability of features, preparation, support, support staff, and benefits. These themes were substantiated by observation of member checking and use of an external auditor. Results indicated that when faculty were required to transition to a new LMS, there were impacts to their workload such as extra time requirements for course development, learning the new LMS, delivering instruction, and technology training. All 13 faculty expressed a need for additional support in the form of either a course release, compensation, or mentoring. Administrators who apply these findings may influence positive social change through a better understanding of the complexity of an LMS transition. This new knowledge may result in increased alignment between administration and faculty, improvement of the student's experience, and improved faculty job satisfaction.

No description available.

Notre travail porte sur le développement d'algorithmes performants d'application de grammaires locales, en prenant comme référence ceux des logiciels libres existants: l'analyseur syntaxique descendant d'Unitex et l'analyseur syntaxique à la Earley d'Outilex. Les grammaires locales sont un formalisme de représentation de la syntaxe des langues naturelles basé sur les automates finis. Les grammaires locales sont un modèle de construction de descriptions précises et à grande échelle de la syntaxe des langues naturelles par le biais de l'observation systématique et l'accumulation méthodique de données. L'adéquation des grammaires locales pour cette tâche a été testée à l'occasion de nombreux travaux. À cause de la nature ambiguë des langues naturelles et des propriétés des grammaires locales, les algorithmes classiques d'analyse syntaxique tels que LR, CYK et Tomita ne peuvent pas être utilisés dans le contexte de ce travail. Les analyseurs descendant et Earley sont des alternatives possibles, cependant, ils ont des coûts asymptotiques exponentiels pour le cas des grammaires locales. Nous avons d'abord conçu un algorithme d'application de grammaires locales avec un coût polynomial dans le pire des cas. Ensuite, nous avons conçu des structures de données performantes pour la représentation d'ensembles d'éléments et de séquences. Elles ont permis d'améliorer la vitesse de notre algorithme dans le cas général. Nous avons mis en oeuvre notre algorithme et ceux des systèmes Unitex et Outilex avec les mêmes outils afin de les tester dans les mêmes conditions. En outre, nous avons mis en oeuvre différentes versions de chaque algorithme en utilisant nos structures de données et algorithmes pour la représentation d'ensembles et ceux fournis par la Standard Template Library (STL) de GNU. Nous avons comparé les performances des différents algorithmes et de leurs variantes dans le cadre d'un projet industriel proposé par l'entreprise Telefónica I+D: augmenter la capacité de compréhension d'un agent conversationnel qui fournit des services en ligne, voire l'envoi de SMS à des téléphones portables ainsi que des jeux et d'autres contenus numériques. Les conversations avec l'agent sont en espagnol et passent par Windows Live Messenger. En dépit du domaine limité et de la simplicité des grammaires appliquées, les temps d'exécution de notre algorithme, couplé avec nos structures de données et algorithmes pour la représentation d'ensembles, ont été plus courts. Grâce au coût asymptotique amélioré, on peut s'attendre à des temps d'exécution significativement inférieurs par rapport aux algorithmes utilisés dans les systèmes Unitex et Outilex, pour le cas des grammaires complexes et à large couverture.

傳統的資產負債管理(Asset-Liability Management，ALM)研究大多強調數量分析方法，並未考慮資料來源的問題。然而在銀行實務上，資產負債管理人員卻必須根據現有內外部資料來釐定資產負債組合的整体政策。在決策支援系統中，模式整合的功能包含模式之組合及連結等，可用以整合數量分析模式與相關資料。本研究運用人工智慧技術來探討資產負債管理中模式整合之問題。藉此可以明瞭ALM的分析流程，以作為銀行人員訓練之參考。另一方面由於應用黑板架構發展系統，也可以提供一個有彈性的整合環境，以反應使用者需求及資料異動狀況，亦可彈性新增、刪除及修改模式整合過程中的資料結構與知識內涵，以為未來連接理論技巧與實務環境之參考。 / The computer support for Asset Liability Management (ALM) in the literature emphasizes on the mathematical analysis and does not address the data source problems. In the practical banking environment, however, ALM decisions are made based on the dynamic internal and external data changes. Therefore, an ideal ALM decision support system has to consider the integration of data sources and mathematical analysis. Traditional Decision Support Systems (DSS) rely on the expert's assistance to understand the problem and formulate or integrate appropriate models. There is a growing recognition that incorporates Artificial Intelligence techniques (Al) into the DSS can enhance the acceptance of these decision aids by management. 　　This paper intends to develop an Intelligent Decision Support System (TDSS) and addresses the model integration concept for the ALM. In the paper, model integration is defined as a series of processes from which important decision making information is inferred through automatic data model mapping and mathematical model conversion. The investigation of model integration concept helps the ALM analysis process understanding which can be useful for baaldng personnel training. On the other hand, the IDSS provides a flexible integration environment in which the system can flexibly response to the user's analysis request with the updated data situations. Since the blackboard architecture used for the system development supports the modularization structure, its inherent maintainability aLows a flexible update of the domain knowledge and data structure, and can therefore serve as a testbed to evaluate the potential integration approaches of various ALM data and mathematical models.