Concurrency in blackboard systems

With the development of new technologies and their implementation in all areas of life, especially education, it is important to understand and accept all the new educational/technological concepts and their benefits. Through the concept of virtual learning environment, educational institutions can improve the quality of the learning process, reduce costs, but also improve communication between students and lecturers. The main objective of this paper is to present characteristics of two most used e-learning systems (Moodle and Blackboard) and provide results of the literature review on the differences of these two systems. Based on the results of literature review, a comparison between Moodle and Blackboard based on ISO 25010 framework is made. Through this secondary research, it was concluded that Moodle is the best solution for introducing a learning management system, but there are numerous opportunities for improving the education system at all levels.

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A Study on the Usability of Moodle and Blackboard – Saudi Students Perspectives

International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM) ◽

10.3991/ijim.v14i10.14381 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (10) ◽

pp. 159

Author(s):

Aseel Alghafis ◽

Atheer Alrasheed ◽

Amal Abdulghany

Keyword(s):

Saudi Arabia ◽

User Interface ◽

University Students ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Learning Management Systems ◽

Management Systems ◽

Saudi Students ◽

Blackboard Systems ◽

The World ◽

E Learning

<p class="0abstract">Nowadays, e-learning management systems are used in many universities around the world. In Saudi Arabia, universities use several systems such as Moodle and Blackboard. However, only little empirical research has been conducted on Saudi students’ preference for such systems. This study compared the usability of Moodle and Blackboard systems among Saudi university students. Specifically, three comparison metrics have been considered: user interface, download and upload service and materials organization. The results showed that the students preferred Moodle and believed that it is more usable than Blackboard in all studied metrics.</p>

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DKRL — AN OBJECT-ORIENTED LANGUAGE TO SUPPORT PROBLEM SOLVING IN DISTRIBUTED BLACKBOARD SYSTEMS

International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.1142/s0218001493000121 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 07 (02) ◽

pp. 221-242 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

MANOJ K. SAXENA ◽

K.K. BISWAS ◽

P.C.P. BHATT

Keyword(s):

Problem Solving ◽

Knowledge Base ◽

Message Passing ◽

Object Oriented ◽

Object Oriented Programming ◽

Current Status ◽

External Knowledge ◽

Blackboard Systems ◽

Problem Solving Process ◽

Internal Knowledge

For distributed problem solving systems, there is a need to define knowledge at two levels, one external to the agents and the other internal to the agents. External knowledge is required to achieve cooperation among agents and global convergence of the problem solving process, whereas internal knowledge is required to solve the sub-problems assigned to the agents. External knowledge specifies the role of each agent and its relationship with other agents in the system. Internal knowledge specifies knowledge structure and the problem solving process within each agent. DKRL is an object-oriented language for describing distributed blackboard systems. In DKRL a problem solving system is described as a collection of distributed intelligent, autonomous agents (modelled as objects), cooperating to solve the problem. An agent consists of a knowledge base, a behaviour part, a local controller, a monitor, and a communication controller. DKRL has characteristics of a dynamic nature, i.e. the agents can be created dynamically and the relationship among them also changes dynamically. An agent in DKRL’s computational model cannot be activated by more than one message at the same time and uses a virtual synchrony environment for message transmission among agents. This model combines the advantages of remote procedure calls with those of asynchronous message passing. DKRL allows object-oriented programming techniques to be used for system development and facilitates the development by allowing one-to-one mapping between the objects in the knowledge model and the knowledge base of the agent. In this paper, we give an overview of the distributed blackboard paradigm for which DKRL was developed as well as the design considerations. We also propose and formally describe the underlying models of DKRL and explain how concurrency is exploited by DKRL. We conclude with the current status of and preliminary experience with DKRL in using it for the development of a gate assignment problem.

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