IADIS INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WWW/INTERNET

1-16

Authors: Nicola Capuano, Angelo Gaeta, Eleonora Fratesi and Giuseppina Rita Mangione

In March 2011 the Italian Government introduced mandatory pre-trial mediation of civil and commercial cases. The Italian mediation model is capable of sensibly speed-up the settlement of disputes but, on the other end, citizens need to be sensitized to the benefits of mediation and must be trained on how mediation works and how to access it. The purpose of this paper is to describe a learning model based on Storytelling and its application in the context of training for civil mediation helping to build challenging training resources that explain, to common citizens with little or no background about legal topics, concepts related to legal mediation in general and in specific areas like e-commerce and civil liability. The defined model has been contextualized with respect to relevant literature and implemented through the development of two software components that have been integrated in an existing e-learning environment.

35-51

Authors: José Javier Durán and Alberto Fernández

In this article we tackle the problem of developing and accessing to dialogue-based applications that require using Web technologies, such as REST services. In particular, we focus on services that are not executed in one-shot (e.g. pipe process), but that require engaging in a dialogue where several messages are exchanged (with the number of messages not known a priori). We propose a protocol for such service interaction, and offer a framework that assists in their life-cycle: programming, deployment, search, invocation, and feedback management. A running example is used to illustrate our proposal and assess how it improves the experience of service developers.

65-80

Authors: Toshiro Minami and Kensuke Baba

Along with the development of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) and popularization of mobile devices, the information environment of our society has radically changed. As a result, the library’s role model also needs to be changed. The most important mission of a library is to collect materials, mainly printed books, and prepare to provide library patrons with them upon request. In order to carry out this mission, classification codes are attached to library materials, and will be shelved according to the code so that searching of specific material becomes easy. In most libraries, Decimal Classification (DC) system is chosen as their classification code. For example in Japan, libraries use NDC (Nippon, or Japan, Decimal Classification) system as their de facto standard classification system. One of the biggest problems of DC is that it is quite hard to adjust the knowledge field code according to the change of important concepts and terms as time goes. For example, computer/information science is a relatively new field for library and it was hard to find an appropriate code for it, and eventually it is assigned to the category code 007 in the third level of categorization of NDC. In this paper, we propose an index for measuring similarity between NDC categories, which reflects how much amount of the books of comparing categories are borrowed by library patrons in common. In this way NDC categorization system can be tuned according to the current status of patrons’ interest tendencies. Also, we demonstrate its usefulness by comparing the interest area profiles between the one using original NDC and the new, or virtual, NDC. By using the virtual NDC, we can recognize the “real” interest area profiles of a patron or a group of patrons from loan record analysis. The studies in this direction will boost up advancing more useful library services toward the future.

94-112

Authors: Nemésio Freitas Duarte Filho, Lucas Bortolini Fronza and Ellen Francine Barbosa

Even providing several benefits and facilities with regard to teaching and learning, mobile learning environments present problems and challenges that must be investigated, especially with respect to the definition and standardization of architectural aspects. Most of these environments are still built in isolation, with particular structures and architectures, hindering aspects such as reuse and interoperability, for instance. On the other hand, several initiatives of using service orientation aspects to support and help the architectural definition of software systems have been investigated. In this paper we discuss the proposition of an architecture for service-oriented mobile learning environments. The architectural requirements that guided the establishment of the proposed architecture were defined by means of a systematic process, being prioritized and complemented with the help of domain specialists. In order to evaluate the proposed architecture, a prototype of a service-oriented mobile learning environment was implemented, showing the viability of practical application of such architecture, especially with regard to service consumption and service implementation, providing interoperability and reuse for educational services.