School of Computer Science and Engineering

Executive Summary Purpose: This document identifies the challenges and opportunities in applying the ontology technology in the Human Resources domain. Target users: A reference for both the HR and the ontology communities. Also, to be used as a roadmap for the OOA itself, within the HR domain.

Although social networking sites (SNSs) present a great deal of opportunities
to support learning, the privacy risk is perceived by learners as a friction
point that affects their full use for learning. Privacy risks in SNSs can be divided
into risks that are posed by the SNS provider itself and risks that result from user’s
social interactions. Using an online survey questionnaire, this study explored the
students’ perception of the benefits in using social networking sites for learning
purposes and their perceived privacy risks. A sample of 214 students from Uganda
Christian University in Africa was studied. The results show that although 88 % of
participants indicated the usefulness of SNSs for learning, they are also aware of the
risks associated with these sites. Most of the participants are concerned with privacy
risks such as identity theft, cyber bullying, and impersonation that might influence
their online learning participation in SNSs.

The use of online social networking tools (SNTs) has become
commonplace within higher education. In this paper a definition and a typology of educational affordance of social networking service (SNS) are presented. The paper also explores the educational affordances whilst examining how university lecturers and students use SNTs to support their educational activities. The data presented here were obtained through a survey in which 38 participants from three universities took part; two universities in Uganda and one in the United Kingdom.
The results show that Facebook is the most popular tool with 75 % of participants having profiles. Whilst most participants perceived the educational significance of these tools, social affordances remain more pronounced compared to pedagogical and technological affordances. The limitations of this study have also been discussed.

Millions of users around the world have registered on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by hundreds of universities (and other organizations) worldwide. Creating and offering these courses costs thousands of pounds. However, at present, revenue generated by MOOCs is not sufficient to offset these costs. The sustainability of MOOCs is a pressing concern as they incur not only upfront creation costs but also maintenance costs to keep content relevant, as well as on-going facilitation support costs while a course is running and re-running. At present, charging a fee for certification seems to be a popular business model adopted by leading platform providers.
In this position paper, the authors explore possible business models for courses, along with their advantages and disadvantages, by conducting a literature study and applying personal insights gained from attending various MOOC discussion fora. Some business models discussed here are: the Freemium model, sponsorships, initiatives and grants, donations, merchandise, the sale of supplementary material, selective advertising, data-sharing, follow-on events, and revenue from referrals. This paper looks at the sustainability of MOOCS as opposed to the sustainability of MOOC platforms, while observing the tight link between them.

Speech offers great potential as a mode of interaction with devices to control our environment, support our work or assist us with tasks of daily living, however, to date the level to which this has been universally achieved and exploited has not matched its potential. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is the process of interpretation of human speech by a machine. This may take two forms; continuous speech, as with human to human interaction or dictation, and discrete speech, such as commands issued to a device. ASR ...

Abstract: Microlearning objects can be related by means of freely created annotations or tagging. Although such solution can help with filtering and searching, it is not enough for formalizing microlearning towards the semantic Web approach. In this paper, we propose the use of upper ontologies and more concretely, OpenCyc, to provide the required formal semantics needed by the semantic Web.