To Ease the Dilemma of Help Desk

Information technology has changed the way organizations function. This resulted in the reliance of help desks to deal with information technology related areas such as hardware, software, and telecommunication. Besides, the adoption of business process reengineering and downsizing has led to the shrinkage of the sizes of help desks. Consequently, the help desks have to cover more information technology products and resolute more technical enquiries with less staff. Thus, the outcome is clear that users have to wait comparably longer before the help desk staff are available to offer assistance. This chapter describes the development of help desk, ranging from help desk structures to support tools. This chapter also discusses the application of knowledge management techniques in the development of a proposed conceptual knowledge management framework and a proposed redistributed knowledge management framework. While the conceptual knowledge management framework proposes a standard methodology to manage help desk knowledge, the proposed redistributed knowledge management framework allows simple and routine enquiries to be rerouted to a user self-help knowledge management system. The proposed system also enables help desk to provide technical knowledge to users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Regardless of time and geographical restrictions, users can solve their simple problems without help desk intervention simply by accessing the proposed system through portable electronic devices.

Semantic Knowledge Mining Techniques for Ubiquitous Access Media Usage Analysis

In this chapter, an information acquisition system is proposed which aims to provide log analysis, dealing with ubiquitous access media, by use of semantic knowledge. The lately emerging figure of the semantic Web, the ontologies, may be used to exalt the Web trails to a semantic level so as to reveal their deeper usage information. The proposed architecture, which is presented in detail, intends to overcome mobile devices’ trail duplicates problems and detect semantic operations similarity of server Web services, which are often composed to provide a function. The references that supplement the chapter provide publications that discuss mainly log file mining and analysis and semantic similarity. Useful technology-used URL resources are also provided.

Accessing Learning Content in a Mobile System

This chapter has the aim to point out an important functionality of a ubiquitous mobile system, and more specifically, its application in the learning domain. This functionality is the possibility to access the learning material from mobile devices, like PDAs (personal digital assistants) during their off-line periods and the technique to approach it, called hoarding. The chapter starts with the overview of a concrete mobile learning system—Mobile ELDIT, so as to give a clear idea of when and how this problem appears and why it is important to pay attention to it. Later, a description of the development approaches for both general and concrete solutions are discussed, followed by more detailed description of the important hoarding steps.

Ubiquitous Computing Applications in Education

With the development of technology, new roads have been opened in education. An interesting idea is to use computers in teaching and learning procedure. Students will have the opportunity to gain access to information resources in a timeless and limitless way. Teachers will be able to transform their classes in a student-centered environment, avoiding the drawbacks of the traditional teacher-centered model. In this direction, ubiquitous computing has significant advantages. Ubiquitous means that computational devices are distributed into the physical world, giving us boundless access to communication and information channels. Now, knowledge can be built based on collaboration, communication, experimentation, and on students’ experiences. Research has shown positive impacts on learning. This chapter deals with issues directly connected to ubiquitous computing, such as its features, types of devices used, and pedagogical goals. The advantages and disadvantages of ubiquitous environments are fully examined and some initiatives are referred.

A Choreographed Approach to Ubiquitous and Pervasive Learning

This chapter introduces a conceptual choreography framework and shows its tremendous interest for ubiquitous and pervasive applications. Choreography is the concept of describing the externally visible behavior of systems in the form of message exchanges. As information of various sensors, services, and user applications have to be integrated in ubiquitous and pervasive environments to provide seamless assistance to users, it is indispensable that means to map heterogeneous message exchange patterns and vocabularies are provided. The authors aim at giving the reader an understanding of the principles and technologies underlying the choreography framework of SOPHIE. Semantic descriptions of message exchange patterns are used to overcome heterogeneity in communication, regardless of the concrete application domain.

Using Multimedia and Virtual Reality for Web-Based Collaborative Learning on Multiple Platforms

Since the advent of the Internet, educators have realised its potential as a medium for teaching. The term e-learning has been introduced to describe this Internet-based education. Although e-learning applications are popular, much research is now underway to improve the features they provide. For example, the addition of synchronous communication methods and multimedia is being studied. With the introduction of wireless networks, mobile devices are also being investigated as a medium to present learning content. Currently, the use of 3-dimensional (3D) graphics is being explored for creating virtual learning environments online. Virtual reality (VR) is already being used in multiple disciplines for teaching various tasks. This chapter focuses on describing some VR systems, and also discusses the current state of e-learning on mobile devices. We also present the VR learning environment that we have developed, incorporating many of the techniques mentioned above for both desktop and mobile devices.

"Neomillennial" Learning Styles Propagated by Wireless Handheld Devices

As the digital-aged learners of today prepare for their post-classroom lives, educational experiences within classrooms and outside of schools should reflect advances both in interactive media and in the learning sciences. Two recent research projects that explore the strengths and limitations of wireless handheld computing devices (WHDs) as primary tools for educational innovations are Harvard University’s Handheld Devices for Ubiquitous Learning (HDUL) and Schrier’s Reliving the Revolution (RtR). These projects provide rich data for analysis using our conceptual framework, which articulates (a) the global proliferation of WHDs; (b) society’s movement toward “ubiquitous computing;” (c) the potential of WHDs to enable sophisticated types of instructional designs; and (d) WHD’s fostering of new, media-based learning styles. In this chapter, our primary focus is the last of these four themes.

Pervasive Computing

In this chapter, we introduce the key ideas related to the paradigm of pervasive computing. We discuss its concepts, challenges, and current solutions by dividing it into four research areas. Such division is how we were able to understand what really is involved in pervasive computing at different levels. Our intent is to provide readers with introductory theoretical support in the selected research areas to aid them in their studies of pervasive computing. Within this context, we hope the chapter can be helpful for researchers of pervasive computing, mainly for the beginners, and for students and professors in their academic activities.

Discursive Context-Aware Knowledge and Learning Management Systems

In this chapter, we look at the research area of discursion and context-aware information as it relates to the user. Much research has been done in the area of effective learning, active learning, and in developing frameworks through which learning can be said to be achieved and have some possibility of being measured (i.e., Networked Learning and Bloom’s Taxonomy) (Bloom, 1956). Having examined many such frameworks, we have found that dialogue plays a large part, and in this chapter we specifically examine dialogue in context of the user’s background and social context. This always plays a critical role, and it is around this that we want to dig deeper. We aim to provide a quality discourse analysis model which will achieve in more detail a picture of the users actual level of knowledge. Problem solving skills, together with the critical thinking capability as part of a team, and individually, in the following chapter.

Using Emotional Intelligence in Personalized Adaptation

The process of training and learning in Web-based and ubiquitous environments brings a new sense of adaptation. With the development of more sophisticated environments, the need for them to take into account the user’s traits, as well as the user’s devices on which the training is executed, has become an important issue in the domain of building novel training and learning environments. This chapter introduces an approach to the realization of personalized adaptation. According to the fact that we are dealing with the stereotypes of e-learners, having in mind emotional intelligence concepts to help in adaptation to the e-learners real needs and known preferences, we have called this system eQ. It stands for the using of the emotional intelligence concepts on the Web.