Analysis of stakeholder concerns with a view to avoid organisational conflict in B2B systems

In recent years there has been a remarkable increase in information exchange between organizations due to changes in market structures and new forms of business relationships. The increase in the volume of business-to-business (B2B) transactions has contributed significantly to the expanding need for electronic systems that could effectively support communication between collaborating organizations. Examples of such collaborating systems include those that offer various types of business-to-business services, e.g. electronic commerce, electronic procurement systems, electronic links between legacy systems, or outsourced systems providing data processing services via electronic media. Development and running of B2B electronic systems has not been problem free. One of the most intractable issues found in B2B systems is the prevalence of inter-organisational conflict reported to exist and persists between the participants of interorganisational electronic networks. There have been very few attempts, however, to prescribe any practical method of detecting the antecedents of such conflict early in B2B development to facilitate smooth construction and the subsequent operation of B2B services. The research reported in this paper focuses on the identification and analysis of antecedent conflict in a joint process involving different organizations in a B2B venture. The proposed method involves identification of domain stakeholders, capturing and packaging their views and concerns into a reusable form, and the application of captured domain experience in B2B systems development. The concepts and methods introduced in this paper have been illustrated with examples drawn from our study of six web-enabled payroll systems.

A matrix-based model for web page community construction and more

The rapid development of network technologies has made the web a huge information source with its own characteristics. In most cases, traditional database-based technologies are no longer suitable for web information processing and management. For effectively processing and managing web information, it is necessary to reveal intrinsic relationships/structures among concerned web information objects such as web pages. In this work, a set of web pages that have their intrinsic relationships is called a web page community. This paper proposes a matrix-based model to describe relationships among concerned web pages. Based on this model, intrinsic relationships among pages could be revealed, and in turn a web page community could be constructed. The issues that are related to the application of the model are deeply investigated and studied. The concepts of community and intrinsic relationships, as well as the proposed matrix-based model, are then extended to other application areas such as biological data processing. Some application cases of the model in a broad range of areas are presented, demonstrating the potentials of this matrix-based model.

Teaching practices for effective cooperative learning in an online learning environment (OLE)

As a teaching practice the application of cooperative learning in tertiary education can present unique challenges for both the practitioner and her students. Mastering this teaching approach requires careful planning, design and implementation for effective deployment in a face-to-face setting. In this setting the success of the cooperative learning approach has been demonstrated. The complexity is significantly increased by additional variables such as the selection and application of technological teaching tools and the change in nature of existing variables including awareness of students' social and communication skills when applying this practice in an Online Learning Environment (OLE). In addition student acceptance of this e-learning approach to learning also needs to be carefully considered. The practitioner must be aware of these factors and have suitable methods in place to support collaboration and interaction between student groups to ensure the ultimate goal with regard to students' learning is achieved. This paper considers how cooperative learning can be combined effectively with these variables and factors of an OLE, and begins with the presentation of a conceptual framework to represent this relationship as a constructive teaching practice. It is anticipated that the conceptual framework would be applied by other practitioners to facilitate cooperative teaching within their OLE. To demonstrate the validity of the framework a case scenario is provided using an Information Technology (IT) undergraduate unit named 'IT Practice'. This is a wholly online unit where extensive participation by the students within small groups is a core requirement. The paper demonstrates the themes of designing curriculum and assessment, as well as flexible teaching strategies for learner diversity but primarily concentrates on managing an effective OLE; that is managing small groups in an online teaching environment.

Web communities analysis and construction

Yanchun Zhang and his co-authors explain how to construct and analyse Web communities based on information like Web document contents, hyperlinks, or user access logs. Their approaches combine results from Web search algorithms, Web clustering methods, and Web usage mining. They also detail the necessary preliminaries needed to understand the algorithms presented, and they discuss several successful existing applications. Researchers and students in information retrieval and Web search find in this all the necessary basics and methods to create and understand Web communities. Professionals developing Web applications will additionally benefit from the samples presented for their own designs and implementations

Distributed network systems : from concepts to implementations

"This textbook covers both theoretical and practical aspects of distributed computing. It describes the client-server model for developing distributed network systems, the communication paradigms used in a distributed network system, and the principles of reliability and security in the design of distributed network systems." "This book is suitable for self-study or for use in classes. Most parts of the book have been used by the authors in their teaching of various topics including distributed systems, computer networks, and distributed database systems. This book can also serve as an invaluable guide for computing professionals in their work for the design and implementation of distributed network systems."

TLAStat+ + Version 1

TLAStat+ is a powerful but easy to use statistics software package.It is an add-in for statistics to be used in conjunction with Microsoft Excel. It provides extra calculation, graph, and help features for statistical data analysis. TLAStat+ is designed for teaching introductory-intermediate courses in statistics. It runs on PCs in various versions of Excel and has powerful data handling capabilities.

Lie symmetries of partial differential equations using symbolic computing

This study presents a theoretical basis for and outlines the method of finding the Lie point symmetries of systems of partial differential equations. It seeks to determine which of five computer algebra packages is best at finding these symmetries. The chosen packages are LIEPDE and DIMSYM for REDUCE, LIE and BIGLIE for MUMATH, DESOLV for MAPLE, and MATHLIE for MATHEMATICA. This work concludes that while all of the computer packages are useful, DESOLV appears to be the most successful system at determining the complete set of Lie symmetries. Also, the study describes REDUCEVAR, a new package for MAPLE, that reduces the number of independent variables in systems of partial differential equations, using particular Lie point symmetries. It outlines the results of some testing carried out on this package. It concludes that REDUCEVAR is a very useful tool in performing the reduction of independent variables according to Lie's theory and is highly accurate in identifying cases where the symmetries are not suitable for finding S/G equations.

Curriculum history of business computing in Victorian tertiary institutions from 1960-1985

Fifty years ago there were no stored-program electronic computers in the world. Even thirty years ago a computer was something that few organisations could afford, and few people could use. Suddenly, in the 1960s and 70s, everything changed and computers began to become accessible. Today* the need for education in Business Computing is generally acknowledged, with each of Victoria's seven universities offering courses of this type. What happened to promote the extremely rapid adoption of such courses is the subject of this thesis. I will argue that although Computer Science began in Australia's universities of the 1950s, courses in Business Computing commenced in the 1960s due to the requirement of the Commonwealth Government for computing professionals to fulfil its growing administrative needs. The Commonwealth developed Programmer-in-Training courses were later devolved to the new Colleges of Advanced Education. The movement of several key figures from the Commonwealth Public Service to take up positions in Victorian CAEs was significant, and the courses they subsequently developed became the model for many future courses in Business Computing. The reluctance of the universities to become involved in what they saw as little more than vocational training, opened the way for the CAEs to develop this curriculum area.