Role of Usability in E-Learning System

Amongst open-source e-learning systems, WebGoat, a progression of OWASP, provides some room for teaching the penetration testing techniques. Yet, it is a major concern of its learners as to whether the WebGoat interface is user-friendly enough to help them acquaint themselves of the desired Web application security knowledge. This chapter encompasses a heuristic evaluation of this application to acquire the usability of contemporary version of WebGoat. In this context of evaluation, the in-house formal lab testing of WebGoat was conducted by the authors. The results highlight some important issues and usability problems that frequently pop-up in the contemporary version. The research results would be pivotal to the embedding of an operational as well as user-friendly interface for its future version.

Model to Estimate the Human Factor Quality in FLOSS Development

This chapter presents a Model to Estimate the Human Factor Quality in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Development, or EHFQ-FLOSS. The model consists of three dimensions: Levels (individual, community, and foundation), Aspects (internal or contextual), and Forms of Evaluation (self-evaluation, co-evaluation, and hetero-evaluation). Furthermore, this model provides 145 metrics applicable to all three levels, as well as an algorithm that guides their proper application to estimate the systemic quality of human resources involved in the development of FLOSS, guide the decision-making process, and take possible corrective actions.

Investigating the Success of OSS Software Projects

Whereas there are several instances of Open Source Software (OSS) projects that have achieved huge success in the market, a high failure rate has been reported for OSS projects. This study conducts a literature survey to gain insight into existing studies on the success of OSS projects. More specifically, this study seeks to extract the critical success factors for OSS projects. Based on the literature survey in this study, the authors found determinants of success in OSS projects and classified them into three broad categories of project traits, product traits, and network structure. These findings have important implications for both the OSS research community and OSS practitioners.

Innovations in Information and Communication Technology Platforms for Public Administration

Over the last two decades, public confidence and trust in government has declined visibly in several Western liberal democracies, owing to a distinct lack of opportunities for citizen participation in political processes, and has given way instead to disillusionment with current political institutions, actors, and practices. The rise of the Internet as a global communications medium has opened up huge opportunities and raised new challenges for government, with digital technology creating new forms of community, empowering citizens, and reforming existing power structures in a way that has rendered obsolete or inappropriate many of the tools and processes of traditional democratic politics. Through an analysis of the No. 10 Downing Street ePetitions Initiative based in the United Kingdom, this chapter seeks to engage with issues related to the innovative use of network technology by government to involve citizens in policy processes within existing democratic frameworks in order to improve administration, reform democratic processes, and renew citizen trust in institutions of governance.

From Knowledge Management to Knowledge Governance

The existing frameworks and methodologies for software designing encompass technological aspects and needs of the urban settings. In software development, getting sufficient and correct requirements from the users is most important, because these requirements will determine the functionality of the system. In indigenous communities identifying the user needs and understanding the local context are always difficult tasks. This typical approach of designing indigenous knowledge management system generates the issues of indigenous knowledge governance, de-contextualisation, and data manipulation. Hence, the main research question this chapter addresses is, How can we introduce indigenous knowledge governance into ICT-based Indigenous Knowledge Management System (IKMS)? The study has been conducted in three phases with collaboration of two indigenous communities, Long Lamai and Bario of Sarawak, East Malaysia. The main outcome of the study is the methodology of conducting a multidisciplinary research and designing the Indigenous Knowledge Governance Framework (IKGF). The framework works as an analytical tool that can help in understanding the essential context in which indigenous knowledge management processes occur. The chapter argues that in order to design appropriate software tools for indigenous knowledge management, information technology professionals need to understand, model, and formalise the holistic indigenous knowledge management system and then use this understanding as a basis for technology design and approaches.

Usability Evaluation Methods

This chapter aims to identify, analyze, and classify the methodologies and methods described in the literature for the usability evaluation of systems and services based on information and communication technologies. The methodology used was a systematic review of the literature. The studies included in the analysis were classified into empirical and analytical methodologies (test, inquiry, controlled experiment, or inspection). A total of 2116 studies were included, of which 1308 were classified. In terms of results, the inquiry methodology was the most frequent in this review, followed by test, inspection, and finally, the controlled experiment methodology. A combination of methodologies is relatively common, especially the combination of test and inquiry methodologies, probably because they assess different but complementary aspects of usability contributing to a more comprehensive assessment.

A Semantic Approach for Multi-Agent System Design

Automating software engineering tasks is crucial to achieve better productivity of software development and quality of software products. Knowledge engineering approaches this challenge by supporting the representation and reuse of knowledge of how and when to perform a development task. Therefore, knowledge tools for software engineering can turn more effective the software development process by automating and controlling consistency of modeling tasks and code generation. This chapter introduces the description of the domain and application design phases of MADAE-Pro, an ontology-driven process for agent-oriented development, along with how reuse is performed between these sub-processes. Two case studies have been conducted to evaluate MADAE-Pro from which some examples of the domain and application design phases have been extracted and presented in this chapter. The first case study assesses the Multi-Agent Domain Design sub-process of MADAE-Pro through the design of a multi-agent system family of recommender systems supporting alternative (collaborative, content-based, and hybrid) filtering techniques. The second one evaluates the Multi-Agent Application Design sub-process of MADAE-Pro through the design of InfoTrib, a Tax Law recommender system that provides recommendations based on new tax law information items using a content-based filtering technique.

Personas and Scenarios Based on Functioning and Health Conditions

This chapter presents how the concepts of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) can be used to optimize the role of personas and scenarios in the development and evaluation of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems and services, especially in aspects related to human functioning and health conditions.

Improving Novice Programmers' Skills through Playability and Pattern Discovery

Game design and development has already been discussed as a viable, motivating alternative to introduce Computer Science concepts to young students. In this sense, it would be useful to obtain a deeper understanding of which skills could be developed in these activities and how such skills could be useful in future careers. This chapter presents the design and evaluation of a Game Building Workshop aimed at introducing the fundamentals of structured programming to students. The games produced by students during 12 weeks were evaluated and the results confronted with students' questions and comments made along the workshop meetings and a final interview. The results indicate that students explored novel programming concepts in order to add features that were not initially planned for the proposed games. These additional features solve playability issues that are highly influential to the experience of the students as game players. Students also reused previously applied solutions to solve similar problems that appeared in subsequent activities. This is an indication that students developed or exercised analogy and abstraction skills during the workshop activities.

Open Innovation

Software engineering is largely concerned with the methodical, systematic production of quality software. Despite significant advances in technology over the last decade, software engineering still heavily relies on human efforts and human interaction to generate economic contributions. In more recent years, the question of software service complexity has become central to Global Software Development (GSD). However, few efforts have surfaced to challenge the complexity of the relational infrastructure of software teams that support the development of software architecture. This is important in order to sustain and support lean software development organisational structures particularly in an open service innovation environment. However, from a socio-economic perspective, there are few theoretical efforts that attempt to introduce new insights on how the human factors contribute towards a GSD value co-creation. The objective of this chapter is to examine the application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and i* (i star) modelling techniques to examine how we could model the economic impact of software relational structures. The chapter explores how i* models leverage SNA concepts to model GSD. This chapter also offers a discussion on the theoretical development of the socio-economics of GSD in an “open innovation” context.