Search results

The use of Active Learning (AL) techniques can significantly improve the teaching–learning process, as the content is explored in a more interactive, participative, and relaxed way. Although expositive classes are still broadly used in Brazil, in this chapter we present some AL techniques, as well as experiences of their application, used in Brazilian K-12, undergraduate, and graduate Information Systems courses. As a result, we have noticed learning has been more effective, and students have been motivated by the use of these AL techniques. Although used in the context of Information System courses, the techniques could be adapted to other scenarios.

Although ontology matchers are annually proposed to address different aspects of the semantic heterogeneity problem, finding the most suitable alignment approach is still an issue. This study aims to propose a computational solution for ontology meta-matching (OMM) and a framework designed for developers to make use of alignment techniques in their applications.

The framework includes some similarity functions that can be chosen by developers and then, automatically, set weights for each function to obtain better alignments. To evaluate the framework, several simulations were performed with a data set from the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative. Simple similarity functions were used, rather than aligners known in the literature, to demonstrate that the results would be more influenced by the proposed meta-alignment approach than the functions used.

The results showed that the framework is able to adapt to different test cases. The approach achieved better results when compared with existing ontology meta-matchers.

Although approaches for OMM have been proposed, it is not easy to use them during software development. On the other hand, this work presents a framework that can be used by developers to align ontologies. New ontology matchers can be added and the framework is extensible to new methods. Moreover, this work presents a novel OMM approach modeled as a linear equation system which can be easily computed.

As the Web 2.0 induces changes in human relationships, several implications across issues and domains of socio-economic life follow; politics is one of them. In the context of Web 2.0, social media have established themselves as a part of citizen’s daily routine. Hence, social media have a direct impact on politics today. This chapter examines this phenomenon and its implications for politics by tracing and examining the recent initiative launched by Rede Globo aimed at collecting citizens’ views and visions on Brazil’s future. “The Brazil I Want” project sought to encourage citizens to publish videos featuring their visions and views of Brazil’s future. Thousands of citizens used this opportunity to express their concerns and hopes related to the future of their cities and their country. This chapter seeks to make sense of it in two ways. First, it explores to what extent and how social media can serve as source of information. Here the concepts and tools of big data and data mining are employed. Second, it inquiries into what people currently think about their country. By bringing these two research perspectives together, this chapter argues that effective ways of resolving issues and concerns the citizens thus voiced exist to the benefit of the efficiency of the policymaking process and the society’s wellbeing.

This paper seeks to present a modeling approach for e‐learning content, describing how to structure e‐learning content and also represent it in OWL DL.

This paper presents three different layers of information that should be considered in e‐learning and conceptual models to guide the representation of e‐learning content. This proposal is based on existing standards and experience gained in previous works. It is also shown how to structure and represent the content embedded in learning objects (LOs).

Besides providing a better structuring of the e‐learning content, content reuse and exploratory navigations over content through the semantic relationships between information (mainly information objects (IOs) and conceptual units) are promoted.

A visual tool to allow a better exploration of the e‐learning content is already being developed. However, it is essential to develop optimized storing and retrieving mechanisms that would make this approach more interesting.

When compared with other approaches such as those based on semantic models and deductive models, the decrease in complexity makes acceptance and adoption of this approach by teachers and instructional designers easier.

This paper fulfils an identified three‐level information need for e‐learning content and presents a new modeling approach. Besides structuring the e‐learning content, the model is also represented in OWL DL. It allows an easier/richer implementation of e‐learning content.

To present YouFlow Microblog and how its functionalities for discourse structuring and message classification allows improving learning. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors developed a survey on microblogs and its functionalities for supporting education, and then the authors developed a new microblog called YouFlow Microblog, which was used in a case study to illustrate its applicability.

The results were: the categorization of messages according to the lesson plan allowed deeper discussions; the amount of messages and preference of the students for the categorization approach are directly related; the filtering of messages (categorization on the reading time) was used as a facilitator of the discussion understanding; the students prefer the search results organized by the categories and related messages; and the students were able to follow the discussions supported by the tree structure of discourse, categorization of messages according to the lesson plan and searches or filtering of messages.

Other case studies involving more students and from different knowledge areas could be performed. Other approaches for messages' visualization for reducing the amount of information could be explored, such as recommendation of messages in microblogs; and groupings of messages according to date, priority and subject.

The developed microblog is useful and proved to be interesting for applying in the educational context.

No other microblog allows different structuring of messages and the their classification according to the lesson plan, in addition to filtering and query functionalities.