Web-Based Course Management Systems (WCMS) Acceptance with College Students in Estonia

The objective of this article is to present the results of a study that investigates the acceptance of WCMS among college students in Estonia. The country is an emerging economy in the Baltic region of Europe. Estonia has made remarkable progress with respect to the use of ICT products in enhancing education at all levels (The Tiger Leap Foundation, 1997). Recently, Estonia joined forces with a pan-European e-learning project called the UNIVe (Estonian eUniversity, 2004; Ifinedo, 2005). Among other goals, the project aims at “increasing the availability of quality education for students and other people willing to learn …and, educating lecturers of universities to compile and practice quality and efficient e-courses” (Ifinedo, 2006).

The Transport-Level Requirements of the Internet-Based Streaming

This article presents the comparison of different transport level congestion control schemes, including variants of the TCP (Postel, 1981). The protocol mechanisms, implemented in various protocols are hard to investigate in a uniform manner (Hosszú, 2005); therefore, the simulator SimCast (Simulator for multicast) is developed for traffic analysis of the unicast (one-to-one communication) and multicast (one-to-many communication) streams. In this article, the TCP and other transport protocol mechanisms will be compared using the SimCast simulator (Orosz & Tegze, 2001). The simulated results are presented through examples.

Theories and Principles for E-Learning Practices with Instructional Design

E-learning has become an area of increasing interest for academics, consultants, and practitioners. Notwithstanding, it seems that in current experiences the instructional dimension is often overlooked. Many elearning courses are content-oriented and the attention is often put on the technological dimension. We believe that a fruitful contribution in order to overcome the gap between technology and pedagogy and promote a more sensible instructional approach to e-learning, can be derived from instructional design (ID). ID is an ever growing field of research (Dijkstra, Seel, Schott, & Tennyson, 1997; Gagné & Briggs, 1990; Merrill, 2001; Reigeluth, 1989; Savery & Duffy, 1995; Wilson & Cole, 1991). Its results have a transversal value with respects to the specific delivery supports adopted in the learning environment. Whether we are dealing with online or face-to-face education, useful criteria from ID can be outlined for designing effective, efficient, and appealing learning experiences.

Strengthening the Knowledge-Base of Cities Through ICT Strategies

The chapter sets out to explain the KBD processes and challenges and opportunities in information acceptance and use in urban policy making. This chapter draws on providing a clear understanding on policy frameworks and relevant ICT applications of the Queensland Smart State experience.

Social Networking and Personal Learning Environment

In social studies a social network is the set of relations that links people, through their interactions and familiarity of various kind. Today, however, social networking indicates a growing phenomenon, characterised by Web technologies that create and keep together groups of people on the basis of common interests. These tools (social software technologies) include for instance: blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, and offer new opportunities to promote collaboration, to assist conversations, to help in the sharing of knowledge, in work and learning contexts, both formal and informal. Although some of these tools are often used in LMSs, the main idea of this new approach is to consider the advantages coming from general purpose tools, widely available on the net, and characterised by an intrinsic vitality and spontaneity. In this context, also linked to a growing criticism of the current e-learning model, based on the extensive use of VLEs (virtual learning environments), new proposals oriented towards the definition of new models of Web spaces for personal learning (personal learning environment or virtual learning landscape) are being put forward. In these new systems the individual has a central place, in a network of resources and of social and friendly interactions that offer support on the emotional as well as on the cognitive level.

A New Algorithm for Subset Matching Problem Based on Set-String Transformation

In computer engineering, a number of programming tasks involve a special problem, the so-called tree matching problem (Cole & Hariharan, 1997), as a crucial step, such as the design of interpreters for nonprocedural programming languages, automatic implementation of abstract data types, code optimization in compilers, symbolic computation, context searching in structure editors and automatic theorem proving. Recently, it has been shown that this problem can be transformed in linear time to another problem, the so called subset matching problem (Cole & Hariharan, 2002, 2003), which is to find all occurrences of a pattern string p of length m in a text string t of length n, where each pattern and text position is a set of characters drawn from some alphabet S. The pattern is said to occur at text position i if the set p[j] is a subset of the set t[i + j - 1], for all j (1 = j = m). This is a generalization of the ordinary string matching and is of interest since an efficient algorithm for this problem implies an efficient solution to the tree matching problem. In addition, as shown in (Indyk, 1997), this problem can also be used to solve general string matching and counting matching (Muthukrishan, 1997; Muthukrishan & Palem, 1994), and enables us to design efficient algorithms for several geometric pattern matching problems. In this article, we propose a new algorithm on this issue, which needs only O(n + m) time in the case that the size of S is small and O(n + m·n0.5) time on average in general cases.

NETRIC

The article presents a proposed method to select an optimal set of the multicast protocol parameters, which are linearly independent from each other. A multidimensional hyperspace, as a mathematical model, is stated where every transport protocol parameter is represented with an individual point. A determined novel protocol parameter set is shown and the modeling procedure is presented on some examples. A multicast transport simulator has been applied to describe the performance of the transport protocols and for optimization of the parameters, providing the most reliable multicasting operation.

Leveraging Supply Chain Management in the Digital Economy

A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers. In other words, supply chain encompasses all of the activities associated with moving goods from raw-materials stage through to the end user. The information systems needed to monitor all of these activities are a critical part of the mix. Successful supply chain management (SCM), then, coordinates and integrates all of these activities into a seamless process. It embraces and links all of the partners in the chain. In addition to the key functional areas within the organization, these partners include vendors, carriers, third-party logistics companies, and information systems providers.

Knowledge Management with Partners in a Dynamic Information Environment

The purpose of this article is to analyse the interaction between the dynamic information environment (IE) and the operational environment to promote the cooperation of the higher education institution with business life and enhance the external impact of the institution on its environment. The dynamic IEs are analysed to manage the information systems and internal processes in an educational institution and their cooperating partners. This article is organised as follows: The article introduces the approach of IEs and operational environments. Then the concept of a dynamic IE is used to analyse the information systems used in the core internal processes of the higher education institution. The study also describes the partnership in a dynamic IE. Thereafter, a short case study is presented about partnership using the electronic Optima platform at the Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS). Finally, the results of the study are summarised in the concluding section.

IT-Enabled Reengineering

In this article, we first discuss the effects of ITenabled BPR on firm productivity by providing both empirical and theoretical evidence from the literature. We then highlight past experiences of several major firms in the United States with the IT-enabled BPR implementations. Finally, we comment on expected future trends in this area.