The success of an application programming interface (API) crucially depends on how well its documentation meets the information needs of software developers. Previous research suggests that these information needs have not been sufficiently understood. This article presents the results of a series of semistructured interviews and a follow-up…

With today's high demand for online applications and services running on the Internet, software has become a vital component in our lives. With every revolutionary technology comes challenges unique to its characteristics; for online applications, security is one huge concern and challenge. Currently, there are several schemes that address…

The Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry initiative is a collaborative effort for developing interoperable, science-based ontologies. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) serves as the upper ontology for the domain-level ontologies of OBO. BFO is an upper ontology of types as conceived by defenders of realism. Among the ontologies developed for OBO…

Knowledge exchange between employees is an essential feature of recent commercial organisations on the competitive market. Based on the data gathered by various information technology (IT) systems, social links can be extracted and exploited in knowledge exchange systems of a new kind. Users of such a system ask their queries and the system…

The advent of Web 2.0, also called the Social Web, has changed the way people interact with the Web. Assisted by the technologies associated with this new trend, users now play a much more active role as content providers. This Web paradigm shift has also changed how companies operate and interact with their employees, partners and customers. The…

This paper presents a methodology for the design of intelligent learning environments. We recognise that in the educational technology field, theory development and system-design should be integrated and rely on an iterative process that addresses: (a) the difficulty to elicit precise, concise, and operationalized knowledge from "experts" and (b)…

An interoperability gap exists between Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and Learning Object Repositories (LORs). Learning Objects (LOs) and the associated Learning Object Metadata (LOM) that is stored within LORs adhere to a variety of LOM standards. A common LOM standard found in LORs is the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)…

The success of Web 2.0 inspires e-learning to evolve into e-learning 2.0, which exploits collective intelligence to achieve user-centric learning. However, searching for suitable learning paths and content for achieving a learning goal is time consuming and troublesome on e-learning 2.0 platforms. Therefore, introducing formal learning in these…

Nowadays we need to teach students how to become flexible problem solvers in a dynamic world. The pace in which technology changes and complexity increases requires increased efficiency in learning and understanding. This requires the engineers of tomorrow to quickly gain knowledge and insight outside their prime area of expertise. To transfer…

Many current (online) help systems fail because users refuse to use them or, even if they do so, they do not perceive them as helpful. There is an obvious gap between the intentions of the help content authors and the achievement of objectives concerning the perceived usefulness by help users. Problems may be divided into psychological and…

The level of learners' expertise has been used as a metric and diagnostic mechanism of instruction. This metric influences mental effort directly according to the applications of cognitive load theory. Cognitive efficiency, an optimal measurement technique of expertise, was developed by Kalyuga and Sweller to replace instructional efficiency in…

In well-defined domains such as Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry, solutions to a posed problem can objectively be classified as correct or incorrect. In ill-defined domains such as medicine, the classification of solutions to a patient problem as correct or incorrect is much more complex. Typical tutoring systems accept only a small set of…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) that employ a model-tracing methodology have consistently shown their effectiveness. However, what evidently makes these tutors effective, the cognitive model embedded within them, has traditionally been difficult to create, requiring great expertise and time, both of which come at a cost. Furthermore, an…

The DIN Didactical Object Model extends the approaches of existing Educational Modeling Languages introducing specifications for contexts and experiences. In this paper, we show how the Didactical Object Model can be used for sharing didactical expertise. Educational Modeling Languages change the design paradigm from content orientation towards…

The 4th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2011) brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large datasets to answer educational research questions. The conference, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, July 6-9, 2011, follows the three previous editions…