Mobile Computing at Acadia University

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Mobile Computing at Acadia University
October 13, 1998

• Tomasz Müldner
• Jodrey School of Computer Science
• Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Acadia University
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Acadia UniversityOverview

• Acadia University was born in 1838
• It is small (lt 4,000 students)
• Concentrates on undergraduate programs
• In 1996, partnership with IBM formed
• All faculty members and students get an IBM laptop

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Acadia UniversityElectronic Classrooms

• All classrooms will have
• instructors console
• network connection for every student
• Two kinds of classrooms lecture and studio

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Acadia UniversityElectronic Classrooms
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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Related SoftwareACME

• ACME (AITT) provides a single place for
• course-related information
• course outline
• office hours
• discussion groups
• on line testing
• upload and download of notes

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Related SoftwareACME
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Related SoftwareACME
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Related SoftwareACME, Sample Experience
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Related SoftwareImplementation of ACME

• Server-based, CGI scripts written in Perl
• Dynamic HTML pages
• JavaScript for visual enhancements
• Standard file system for persistence

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Related SoftwareDiscussion of ACME

• Popular used in many courses
• Does not require any installation (Web browser)
• Tends to overload a Web server
• Support for pull, no support for push
• Does not provide collaborative facilities
• Does not automate various tasks
• No support for disconnected operations

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Related SoftwareShared Workspace, SW

• Provides support for
• asynchronous exchange of information
• synchronous collaboration in electronic
  (virtual) classrooms

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Related SoftwareSW Exchange of Information

• Asynchronous sharing of homogenous, centralized
  information systems, IS
• Each IS consists of classifications and
  information
• Every SW can fetch and provide

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Related SoftwareSW Example Repository
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Related SoftwareSW Collaboration

• Support for collaborative editing with a single
  controller and multiple ghosts
• Various floor control policies
• Chat room for raising a hand

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Related SoftwareSW Collaboration
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Related SoftwareSW Implementation

• Every SW is a server and a client
• Client/Server implementation using Java and RMI
• JSDT implementation of shared editing

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Related SoftwareSW Discussion

• Limited support for collaborative editing
• Inefficient updates of ghosts
• No support for filtering, locating, automatic
  organization, or alerting
• Each IS is centralized rather than distributed
• No support for disconnected operations

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Related Software DMS Functionality

• Electronic maintenance of assignments
• Management of distributed information resources
• assignment descriptions
• assignment solutions
• marks

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Related Software DMS Functionality

• Instructor submits assignment descriptions
• Student downloads assignments and uploads
  solutions
• Marker downloads solutions, and marks them
  off-line using specialized marking software then
  uploads results
• Student gets a notification

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Related Software DMS Student
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Related Software DMS Marker
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Related Software DMS Implementation

• DMS consists of a central server and set of
  users Students, Markers, Instructors
• A user may need to download its application and
  run it locally. DMS will package the application
  and deploy it to the user

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Related Software DMS Implementation

• Shared resources and the software that controls
  access to them resides at a server site
• Java and CORBA are used (for language
  independence and speed)
• Java Applets are used for the user-side client
  (for (re)deployment)

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Related Software DMS Discussion

• Centralized server creates a bottleneck
• Very limited support for push
• For marking each assignment, a marker has to
  develop an ad-hoc marking strategy

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Related SoftwareJersey (Tomek, Giles, Nicholl)

• MOO/MUD (Multi-User-Dialogs) based systems
  real world emulation (spatial)
• Users, places, objects
• Navigation, communication
• Creating, modifying, transporting objects
• Run-time customizability, expendability

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Related SoftwareJersey Implementation

• Client/server written in VisualAge Smalltalk
• Communication with the user by Smalltalk
  messages (extended with the list of messages)
• Agents used to automate user queries,
  automatically capture events, etc.

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Related SoftwareJersey Discussion

• Spatial rather than functional organization
• Traditional client/server
• Agents are really daemons

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Related commercial software

• Outlook Express
• Scheduling
• Email Rules

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Contents

• Electronic campus at Acadia University
• Related software projects
• Automated Courseware Management Environment
• Shared Workspace
• Distributed Marking System
• Jersey
• Other related commercial software
• Mobile agents vision

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Mobile Agent Vision
...There is a growing danger that agents will
be a deception and an empty promise... Benn
Schneiderman
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Mobile Agent Vision
...agent technologies are most useful when
presenting a simpler abstraction of the
environment to the user Cybenko and
Brewington
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Mobile Agent VisionJustification

• Rapid (re)deployment of applications
• Automated work
• Ability to find and filter information
• Support for push
• Customized views of information
• Support for disconnected operations
• Active network load balancing

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Mobile Agent VisionStudent Registration

• Assumptions
• Student registers in five courses
• When arrives, receives a laptop
• Upon first connection to the network, five course
  agents arrive at her/his laptop

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Mobile Agent VisionCourse Agent

• Each course agent represents a single course
• The user interacts with the course agent through
  an activity-based user interface
• Standardized interfaces can be customized
  (through wizards or an agent shell)

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Mobile Agent VisionActivity-based Interface

• Contact
• Instructor
• Read Notes
• Get Marks

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Mobile Agent VisionActivity-based Interface

• Contact
• Instructor
• Do Assignment 1
• Read Notes
• Get Marks

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Mobile Agent VisionAssignment Agent

• Read
• Do
• Submit
• Get similar

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Mobile Agent VisionMarker Agent

• View
• Execute
• Mark

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Mobile Agent VisionDiscussion

• Agent bureaucracy provides a functional
  organization (course related agents, etc.)
• Agents come built-in can be further customized
  (explicitly, or implicitly adaptive agents)

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Mobile Agent VisionCollaborative Work

• Two modes of operation
• serial here the agent moves to the next group
  member and brings updates.
• Group members may be on- or off-line

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Mobile Agent VisionCollaborative Work

• Concurrent
• two modes of reintegration of data
• merging
• versioning

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Mobile Agent VisionOn Line Testing

• A test agent can be broadcast to the test group
• Each test agent can control the test, mark it,
  and then store results somewhere
• The test agent may be customized to remember
  past inputs, etc.

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Mobile Agent VisionDiscussion Groups

• Two kinds
• off-line (traditional) for push (Informant)
• on-line (chat rooms). You can create an agent to
  be your proxy in a chat room

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Mobile Agent VisionDistributed Information
Systems

• (Work in progress D. Currie)
• Each IS can be distributed (DIS)
• Each DIS is a directed graph leaves store
  information, other nodes classification
• Remote information nodes are kept in cache
• Cache is cleared based on priorities

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Mobile Agent VisionDIS

• Cached items can be marked bad
• Multiple views of the classification can be
  maintained
• Classification can be built explicitly or
  implicitly

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Mobile Agent VisionDIS Agents

• Agents can maintain priorities
• Agents can find and filter information so that it
  is copied into cache and available off-line

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Conclusion
Mobile agents can automate many tasks in mobile
computing.
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Acknowledgments

• Karine Blouin
• Yao Chen
• Duane Currie
• Ali Elbashtiri
• Soon Ping Phang
• Eng Kian Tian