An experience of collaboration using a PaaS for the smarter university model

Coccoli, Mauro; Maresca, Paolo; Stanganelli, Lidia; Guercio, Angela

doi:10.1016/j.jvlc.2015.10.014

Cited by 21 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…According to the above considerations, the Federico II University in Naples, Italy, setup a laboratory with suited hardware and software configurations, providing students of the "Software engineering" class with the possibility to use the most advanced methodologies and tools to develop quite complex projects within their assignments and to share their results with mates. Previously, the authors already carried on didactic activities focusing on computer programming in collaborative environments (see, e.g., [22], [23], and references therein) but cognitive computing has accelerated this need, thus enabling more ambitious projects to be implemented both from the point of view of the hardware resources that can be used and the complexity of the software that can be used. The implemented solution is an integrated environment offering high-level tools for cognitive computing design and programming.…”

Section: A the Hardware And Software Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

When E-Learning Meets Big Data, Cognitive Computing, and Collaborative Environments

Coccoli¹,

Maresca²,

Molinari³

2019

International Conferences on Distributed Multimedia Systems

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The e-learning scenario is fast-changing in all of its main aspects from both the technology side and the users' perspective. In this vein, applications and services as well as methodologies are evolving rapidly running after the more recent innovations, through the adoption of novel infrastructures and distributed architectures, to provide the most advanced solutions. In this situation, we observe that the more influential technological factors are two. The former is the availability of a new wave of big data also inherent educational tasks, which can be considered a powerful source for all the people involved in the educational process and acts as enabler for the development of new models for both management and education, based on analytics. The latter is cognitive computing, which can provide learners and teachers with innovative services enhancing the whole learning process, also introducing new capabilities to improve human machine interactions. In these circumstances, it seems that Learning Management Systems (LMS) have reached their maturity stage and they may need a redesign. In this respect, the paper outlines the evolutionary trends of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and presents the results achieved within two experiences carried on in two Italian universities.

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Section: A the Hardware And Software Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

When E-Learning Meets Big Data, Cognitive Computing, and Collaborative Environments

Coccoli¹,

Maresca²,

Molinari³

2019

International Conferences on Distributed Multimedia Systems

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“…Owing to the IBM Academic Initiative, universities can freely experiment Watson and other functionalities. In particular, the platform provides programmers with a plenty of services based on the Watson artificial intelligence [7] and the DeepQ&A algorithm, enabling the creation of complex applications and, thus, giving a significant contribution to the increasing success of cognitive computing applications in many fields of applications, including university classes [8]. In more detail, Watson is a full-featured cognitive computing system for the research and development of cognitive systems and services [9], [10], which can easily interoperate with other applications and legacy systems as well.…”

Section: Semantics and Cognitive Computingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tool for the Semantic Analysis and Recommendation of videos in e-learning

Coccoli¹,

Vercelli²

2016

International Conferences on Distributed Multimedia Systems

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Abstract-Video lessons are increasingly adopted in education, especially in universities and lifelong learning projects. Their popularity is due to the people's familiarity with video and to other intrinsic characteristics of this medium, such as the message rapidity and its reproducibility. Accordingly, Massive Open Online Courses are gaining a prominent role in both formal and informal education and many universities provide video courses for their students through suited platforms or even freely accessible to everyone. To improve the effectiveness of video lessons and to make them part of a wider learning environment, we decided to investigate the possibility of making a system that, starting from a video, can suggest further "readings". Such a system is thought for independent lifelong learners, for regular students, for teachers and instructional designers as well.

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“…These are implemented in remote laboratories so that they will be available everywhere, for all time and without the need of reservation. This concept finds its practical realization in the newly acquired possibility of using a set of cloud applications in a PaaS environment, i.e., the IBM Bluemix platform [7]. With this step ahead, students are enabled to cooperate, develop, maintain and manage any project with any team at any time without the need to move to any physical laboratory.…”

Section: Cognitive Computing and Watsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the wide availability of applications for sensorrich modern devices pushes to using methods and techniques strongly based on the interaction with users, which happens mainly through natural interfaces. Accordingly, in this paper we focus our attention on a specific issue, that is, the exploitation of the Platform-as-aService (PaaS) paradigm in the software production [7]. The adoption of PaaS allows using remote virtual machines in place of local hardware and software, thus avoiding time-consuming and expensive installations as well as annoying maintenance tasks [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Computer Programming Through Hands-on Labs on Cognitive Computing

Coccoli

Maresca

Stanganelli

2016

International Conferences on Distributed Multimedia Systems

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Abstract-In this work we report more recent results of a longlasting educational project that we have been carrying on for several years and is evolving continuously. The objective of the mentioned project is making students work on the production of small, yet full featured, software prototypes with a collaborative approach, in a dedicated development environment with suited tools and facilities. At the same time, we seek to lay the foundations to build a pragmatic model to teach cognitive computing programming. We conducted such experience in a programming course at the University of Naples "Federico II" exploiting a software development environment based on the Platform as a Service (PaaS). This made possible to perform a set of cooperative learning activities that we used to demonstrate practically some theoretical concepts, also stressing the use of cognitive computing tools, which introduce a new way of thinking the software design process. From its inception, this educational project has involved a relevant number of students, which has been growing continuously, year after year. At our first attempts, students were assigned a specific activity, which was expected to be concluded within one year. Then, as new classes arrived, we have seen that it was possible to start new activities starting from the precedent achievements, thus requiring further evolutions of the available prototypes. This allowed creating more complex and complete projects, as new tools and services were made available, carrying new opportunities. In the present release, such evolutionary path has led to using the IBM Bluemix platform with its wide range of components, including Watson that is devoted to cognitive computing. This work goes in the direction of developing the smart university model, by using innovative and intelligent services to help raising a new generation of software engineers but also to promote and disseminate a new way for designing and building innovative applications.

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An experience of collaboration using a PaaS for the smarter university model

Cited by 21 publications

References 14 publications

When E-Learning Meets Big Data, Cognitive Computing, and Collaborative Environments

When E-Learning Meets Big Data, Cognitive Computing, and Collaborative Environments

A Tool for the Semantic Analysis and Recommendation of videos in e-learning

Teaching Computer Programming Through Hands-on Labs on Cognitive Computing

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