Computer Science - Book Chapters

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    An artificial intelligence-based interactive learning platform to assist visually impaired children in learning mathematics
    (Springer Nature Ltd., 2023-07-09) Shoaib, Muhammad; Jiang, Shiyu; Jin, Luo; Fitzpatrick, Donal; Pitt, Ian; Science Foundation Ireland
    Visually impaired children mainly depend upon hearing and touch in the absence of vision. Smartphones are now relatively cheap and are in widespread use in almost all parts of the world, including by many people who do not have access to laptops or desktop machines. Smartphone-based applications provide a learning environment in which visually impaired children can enhance their educational skills in a similar way to other students. This paper introduces an artificial intelligence-based interactive learning platform that can enhance the mathematical skills of visually impaired children. This platform can assist teachers in the classroom to provide accessible and interactive materials to their visually impaired students. The proposed platform uses text-to-speech along with vibrotactile and auditory feedback to help visually impaired students arrive at a better understanding of mathematical material. Four participants were recruited to evaluate the prototype of this interactive learning platform. The results showed that understanding of mathematical content in visually impaired children was significantly improved. Furthermore, problem-solving skills and action awareness were enhanced with the help of a multimodal feedback approach. Participants also reported high levels of satisfaction with the proposed design. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible directions for future research aimed at overcoming barriers to learning faced by visually impaired children.
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    Remote learning of mathematics for visually impaired students during COVID-19: Exploring online intervention, resources, challenges and issues
    (Springer Nature, 2024-01-30) Shoaib, Muhammad; Fitzpatrick, Donal; Pitt, Ian; Science Foundation Ireland
    Due to COVID-19, several dramatic changes have appeared all over the world i.e., travel restrictions, healthcare shortages, self-isolation, economic crises, social distancing, increases in food demand, job losses and closure of educational institutions. This led to a rapid transition from face-to-face to remote teaching. Most remote learning platforms are designed primarily for sighted students and are less useful for visually-impaired students. Especially in mathematics, it's quite difficult for visually-impaired students to access rich visual information, such as graphs, algebraic notations, geometric shapes and statistical formulas. This article provides an overview of mathematics learning resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores assistive technology-based interventions which enable visually-impaired and blind students to actively participate in remote teaching and enhance their learning skills. It was noted that solutions are available for various platforms (i.e., smartphones, tablets, laptops & desktop PCs) to support visually-impaired students. Assistive Technology in remote learning also plays a key role in enhancing the mathematical skills of visually-impaired students. Furthermore, we have investigated the important COVID-19-related resources of different institutes which are very beneficial for the online education of visually-impaired students. Moreover, some challenges and issues are discovered such as internet connectivity, lack of interaction, inadequate support, one-way communication and less effective learning. Finally, some future directions are suggested for research i.e., parents should be a part of remote learning.
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    Cloud architectures and management approaches
    (Springer International, 2018-05-19) Dong, Dapeng; Xiong, Huanhuan; González-Castañé, Gabriel; Morrison, John P.
    An overview of the traditional three-layer cloud architecture is presented as background for motivating the transition to clouds containing heterogeneous resources. Whereas this transition adds many important features to the cloud, including improved service delivery and reduced energy consumption, it also results in a number of challenges associated with the efficient management of these new and diverse resources. The CloudLightning architecture is proposed as a candidate for addressing this emerging complexity, and a description of its components and their relationships is given.
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    Guidelines for conducting software engineering research
    (Springer International Publishing, 2020-08) Stol, Klaas-Jan; Fitzgerald, Brian; Science Foundation Ireland; European Regional Development Fund
    This chapter presents a holistic overview of software engineering research strategies. It identifies the two main modes of research within the software engineering research field, namely knowledge-seeking and solution-seeking research—the Design Science model corresponding well with the latter. We present the ABC framework for research strategies as a model to structure knowledge-seeking research. The ABC represents three desirable aspects of research—generalizability over actors (A), precise control of behavior (B) and realism of context (C). Unfortunately, as our framework illustrates, these three aspects cannot be simultaneously maximised. We describe the two dimensions that provide the foundation of the ABC framework—generalizability and control, explain the four different types of settings in which software engineering research is conducted, and position eight archetypal research strategies within the ABC framework. We illustrate each strategy with examples, identify appropriate metaphors, and present an example of how the ABC framework can be used to design a research programme.
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    Cloud service brokerage: Exploring characteristics and benefits of B2B cloud marketplaces
    (Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020-08-28) Paulsson, Victoria; Emeakaroha, Vincent C.; Morrison, John; Lynn, Theo
    With the increasing popularity of cloud computing, a new technology and business model called cloud service brokerage (CSB) is emerging. CSB is, in essence, a middleman in the cloud-computing supply chain to connect prospective cloud buyers with suitable service providers. This chapter focuses on a type of CSB, B2B cloud marketplaces. Recently, this type of marketplace has evolved into two broad categories—business application marketplaces and API marketplaces. This chapter reviews the characteristics of B2B cloud marketplaces, and their benefits, which include ease-of-use and ease-of-integration, enhanced security, increased manageability, faster implementation, and cost reduction. The chapter concludes with two mini-case studies, on Salesforce AppExchange and RapidAPI, to illustrate how firms could use B2B cloud marketplaces to generate, capture and measure business value.