Digital anthropology and educational eGames: learning through behavioural patterns in digital, game-based contexts

The selected publications are focused on the relations between users, eGames and the educational context, and how they interact together, so that both learning and user performance are improved through feedback provision. A key part of this analysis is the identification of behavioural, anthropological patterns, so that users can be clustered based on their actions, and the steps taken in the system (e.g. social network, online community, or virtual campus). In doing so, we can analyse large data sets of information made by a broad user sample,which will provide more accurate statistical reports and readings. Furthermore, this research is focused on how users can be clustered based on individual and group behaviour, so that a personalized support through feedback is provided, and the personal learning process is improved as well as the group interaction. We take inputs from every person and from the group they belong to, cluster the contributions, find behavioural patterns and provide personalized feedback to the individual and the group, based on personal and group findings. And we do all this in the context of educational games integrated in learning communities and learning management systems. To carry out this research we design a set of research questions along the 10-year published work presented in this thesis. We ask if the users can be clustered together based on the inputs provided by them and their groups; if and how these data are useful to improve the learner performance and the group interaction; if and how feedback becomes a useful tool for such pedagogical goal; if and how eGames become a powerful context to deploy the pedagogical methodology and the various research methods and activities that make use of that feedback to encourage learning and interaction; if and how a game design and a learning design must be defined and implemented to achieve these objectives, and to facilitate the productive authoring and integration of eGames in pedagogical contexts and frameworks. We conclude that educational games are a resourceful tool to provide a user experience towards a better personalized learning performance and an enhance group interaction along the way. To do so, eGames, while integrated in an educational context, must follow a specific set of user and technical requirements, so that the playful context supports the pedagogical model underneath. We also conclude that, while playing, users can be clustered based on their personal behaviour and interaction with others, thanks to the pattern identification. Based on this information, a set of recommendations are provided Digital Anthropology and educational eGames 6 /216 to the user and the group in the form of personalized feedback, timely managed for an optimum impact on learning performance and group interaction level. In this research, Digital Anthropology is introduced as a concept at a late stage to provide a backbone across various academic fields including: Social Science, Cognitive Science, Behavioural Science, Educational games and, of course, Technology-enhance learning. Although just recently described as an evolution of traditional anthropology, this approach to digital behaviour and social structure facilitates the understanding amongst fields and a comprehensive view towards a combined approach. This research takes forward the already existing work and published research onusers and eGames for learning, and turns the focus onto the next step — the clustering of users based on their behaviour and offering proper, personalized feedback to the user based on that clustering, rather than just on isolated inputs from every user. Indeed, this pattern recognition in the described context of eGames in educational contexts, and towards the presented aim of personalized counselling to the user and the group through feedback, is something that has not been accomplished before.

Strategic tensions within the smartphones industry: the case of BlackBerry

This paper reviews some aspects of corporate strategy in a well-known smart phone provider. Two approaches to strategy are analysed: one concerning the industry and the other related to the organization. A general introduction on the smart phones industry is given followed by specific background on BlackBerry. Two perspectives are explored: the first talks about the paradox of compliance and choice within the industry and the second discusses the paradox of control and chaos in BlackBerry. The paper concludes with a brief overview on the company performance from 2006 to 2012 leading to some recommendations.

IF-MANET: Interoperable framework for heterogeneous mobile ad hoc networks

The advances in low power micro-processors, wireless networks and embedded systems have raised the need to utilize the significant resources of mobile devices. These devices for example, smart phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, and sensors are gaining enormous processing power, storage capacity and wireless bandwidth. In addition, the advancement in wireless mobile technology has created a new communication paradigm via which a wireless network can be created without any priori infrastructure called mobile ad hoc network (MANET). While progress is being made towards improving the efficiencies of mobile devices and reliability of wireless mobile networks, the mobile technology is continuously facing the challenges of un-predictable disconnections, dynamic mobility and the heterogeneity of routing protocols. Hence, the traditional wired, wireless routing protocols are not suitable for MANET due to its unique dynamic ad hoc nature. Due to the reason, the research community has developed and is busy developing protocols for routing in MANET to cope with the challenges of MANET. However, there are no single generic ad hoc routing protocols available so far, which can address all the basic challenges of MANET as mentioned before. Thus this diverse range of ever growing routing protocols has created barriers for mobile nodes of different MANET taxonomies to intercommunicate and hence wasting a huge amount of valuable resources. To provide interaction between heterogeneous MANETs, the routing protocols require conversion of packets, meta-model and their behavioural capabilities. Here, the fundamental challenge is to understand the packet level message format, meta-model and behaviour of different routing protocols, which are significantly different for different MANET Taxonomies. To overcome the above mentioned issues, this thesis proposes an Interoperable Framework for heterogeneous MANETs called IF-MANET. The framework hides the complexities of heterogeneous routing protocols and provides a homogeneous layer for seamless communication between these routing protocols. The framework creates a unique Ontology for MANET routing protocols and a Message Translator to semantically compare the packets and generates the missing fields using the rules defined in the Ontology. Hence, the translation between an existing as well as newly arriving routing protocols will be achieved dynamically and on-the-fly. To discover a route for the delivery of packets across heterogeneous MANET taxonomies, the IF-MANET creates a special Gateway node to provide cluster based inter-domain routing. The IF-MANET framework can be used to develop different middleware applications. For example: Mobile grid computing that could potentially utilise huge amounts of aggregated data collected from heterogeneous mobile devices. Disaster & crises management applications can be created to provide on-the-fly infrastructure-less emergency communication across organisations by utilising different MANET taxonomies.

Acceleration and visualization of Dynamic Network Optimization

With the emerging prevalence of smart phones and 4G LTE networks, the demand for faster-better-cheaper mobile services anytime and anywhere is ever growing. The Dynamic Network Optimization (DNO) concept emerged as a solution that optimally and continuously tunes the network settings, in response to varying network conditions and subscriber needs. Yet, the DNO realization is still at infancy, largely hindered by the bottleneck of the lengthy optimization runtime. This paper presents the design and prototype of a novel cloud based parallel solution that further enhances the scalability of our prior work on various parallel solutions that accelerate network optimization algorithms. The solution aims to satisfy the high performance required by DNO, preliminarily on a sub-hourly basis. The paper subsequently visualizes a design and a full cycle of a DNO system. A set of potential solutions to large network and real-time DNO are also proposed. Overall, this work creates a breakthrough towards the realization of DNO.