Application Frameworks for Collaborative Learning. We will pioneer the use of key software engineering techniques - design patterns and application frameworks - to reduce the cost and improve the quality of online collaborative learning activities. For the first time, we will combine software engineering and educational knowledge to use design patterns to describe best practice for these activities in engineering terms; we will use application frameworks to aggregate these patterns and implement ....Application Frameworks for Collaborative Learning. We will pioneer the use of key software engineering techniques - design patterns and application frameworks - to reduce the cost and improve the quality of online collaborative learning activities. For the first time, we will combine software engineering and educational knowledge to use design patterns to describe best practice for these activities in engineering terms; we will use application frameworks to aggregate these patterns and implement them as a readily usable tool. The result will be a powerful new generation of stable collaborative eLearning tools with enhanced scalability, interoperability and adaptability.Read moreRead less
Flexible and Robust Protocol-Based Interaction between Agents in Open Systems. There has been much discussion of the importance of software agents for supporting a wide variety of interaction between businesses and individuals over the internet. Important applications include e-commerce and b2b applications. For the potential of software agents to be realised in open systems, issues of flexibility, robustness, and extensibility are critical. This project addresses the development of flexible ....Flexible and Robust Protocol-Based Interaction between Agents in Open Systems. There has been much discussion of the importance of software agents for supporting a wide variety of interaction between businesses and individuals over the internet. Important applications include e-commerce and b2b applications. For the potential of software agents to be realised in open systems, issues of flexibility, robustness, and extensibility are critical. This project addresses the development of flexible and powerful mechanisms for interaction, within the context of FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) standards. The project uses FIPA's Agentcities as a test bed, enabling us to build on and co-operate with a large European project starting mid 2001.Read moreRead less