Special Issue on: "Web-based Learning Environments for Interactive and Collaborative Learning" - IJCEELL

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning  (IJCEELL)

Call for Papers

Special Issue on: "Web-based Learning Environments for Interactive and Collaborative Learning"

Guest Editors: 

Dr. Qiyun Wang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dr. Xiangzeng Meng and Dr. Hong Lu, Shandong Normal University, China

Compared to the physical classroom, the web-based learning environment has many unique advantages. For instance, it provides an equal opportunity for every student to participate, share information, voice their opinions and construct knowledge with the rest of the group. It also enables students to interact and collaborate with each other at any time and anywhere. Additionally, the learning process is often automatically recorded and can be easily monitored and tracked.

However, designing and using a web-based environment to support teaching and learning has many challenges as well. The environment must be easy to access and must meet different students’ needs, and must be a safe and comfortable space in which students are willing to contribute and support one another.

The main objective of this special issue is to provide a venue for researchers to share their experiences and challenges in designing and using web-based learning environments to support interactive and collaborative learning. The learning environment can be an online course, a space created in a course management system (such as Blackboard or Moodle), or a shared workspace designed using any free web 2.0 tools such as weblog or wiki. The discussions in this issue will have implications for practitioners designing effective web-based learning environments.

The issue will publish empirical research papers and case studies of designing or using web-based learning environments to support interactive and collaborative learning. Conceptual papers that address critical issues and concerns about online learning, interactive and collaborative learning or learning environment design are also welcome.

Subject Coverage

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Web-based virtual learning environments
• Using social media to support teaching and collaborative learning
• Enhancing interactive and collaborative learning by using technology
• Technology-supported collaborative learning
• Using web 2.0 tools such as weblog, wiki, microbloging and Facebook for learning
• Web-based learning communities
• Web-based communities of practice for teachers' professional development
• Web-based learning resource management and utilisation
• Collaborative knowledge construction
• Webquest design
• Social presence in web-based learning environments
• Social affordances of technology for teaching and learning
• Innovative use of course management systems to support interactive learning
• Issues and concerns of learning environment design

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 October, 2012

Notification to authors: 31 December, 2013

Final versions due: 28 February, 2013

Editors and Notes

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please go to Online Submissions of Papers. If you experience any problems submitting your paper online, please contact submissions@inderscience.com, describing the exact problem you experience. Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the names of the Guest Editors

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Special Issue on Service and Cloud Based Data Integration - Springer Journal of Grid Computing

Special Issue on Service and Cloud Based Data Integration

Springer Journal of Grid Computing

Website: http://users.sdsc.edu/~jianwu/JGC-SCDI-2013/

Introduction
Integration and synthesis of heterogeneous, autonomous and distributed data sources have been an essential and hard issue in enterprise computing, scientific computing and social computing. It is not always feasible to achieve effective data integration around definite schemas when there are mismatches in cross-domain integration and when such issues as compatibility, scalability, timeliness, and user manipulation are concerned. Many traditional data integration approaches/frameworks begin to show their limitations, especially when dealing with situations like data deluge and data source evolution. Service Oriented Architecture, Cloud computing and Web 2.0 techniques have brought light to dealing with these hard issues. Recent years have seen some important progresses and potentials. Some "Data as a Service" applications target fast, on-demand data integration and latest data provisioning. Meanwhile, SOA is being employed by many large projects to deal with data collection, integration and discovery challenges across data repositories.
The Special Issue on Service and Cloud Based Data Integration will provide the scientific and industrial community a dedicated forum, within the prestigious Springer Journal of Grid Computing, for presenting novel models, methodologies, and solution patterns that address the data integration issue and fit in the service and cloud based settings. This special issue will focus on the use of service and/or cloud based technologies to meet the new data integration challenges that are not well served by the current approaches. We believe this venue will be an excellent place to help researchers, practitioners and vendors in this community show latest progresses, determine future goals, and present techniques for future development of data integration.


Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

·  Service Abstraction and Virtualization for Distributed Data Integration

·  Modeling and Composition of Data Services

·  Scalability, Reliability and other Quality Assurance of Data Integration

·  Correctness Verification and Freshness of Distributed Data Integration Results

·  Performance Analysis and Optimization of Distributed Data Integration Process

·  Agile and Ad-hoc Integration of Heterogeneous Data Sources

·  Automatic Tracing and Response of Changes and Updates

·  Real-time Integration and Processing of Large-scale Sensor Data

·  Enterprise Mashup

·  User-friendly Mashup of Distributed Data Sources

·  Data Flow Modeling and Management in Cloud

·  Cloud-based Architectures for Distributed Data Integration

·  Applications of SOA and Cloud Infrastructure in Data Integration

Important Dates

·  Papers Due: October 15, 2012

·  First Round Decisions: January 15, 2013

·  Major Revisions if needed: March 1, 2013

·  Second Round Decisions: April 15, 2013

·  Minor Revisions if needed: June 1, 2013

·  Final Decision: July 1, 2013

·  Publication Date: September 2013

Paper Submission
Authors are invited to submit original and unpublished technical papers. All submissions will be peer-reviewed and judged on correctness, originality, technical strength, significance, quality of presentation, and relevance to the special issue topics of interest. Submitted papers may not have appeared in or be under consideration for another workshop, conference or a journal, nor may they be under review or submitted to another forum during the review process. Submitted papers may not exceed 20 single-spaced double-column pages using 10-point size font on 8.5x11 inch pages (1" margins), including figures, tables, and references. Note that accepted papers will likely be between 15 to 20 pages, depending on a variety of factors. For more information for preparing the submitted papers, please see http://www.springer.com/computer/communication+networks/journal/10723, under "Instructions for Authors". The papers (PDF format) must be submitted online at http://grid.edmgr.com/ before the deadline. Please specify the article type to be "special issue: data integration" when submitting the paper on the website. For any questions on the submission process, please email the guest editors at jgc.scdi.2013@gmail.com.


Special Issue Guest Editors

·  Yanbo Han (hanyanbo@ncut.edu.cn), Research Center for Cloud Computing, North China University of Technology, China

·  Jianwu Wang (jianwu@sdsc.edu), San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego, U.S.A.

Editors-in-Chief

·  Peter Kacsuk, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

·  Ian Foster, University of Chicago & Argonne National Laboratory

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Workshop on Cloud Computing Challenges for enabling the IoT (CCC4IoT 2012) in conjunction with 5th IEEE/ACM UCC2012

First International Workshop on Cloud Computing Challenges for enabling the Internet of Things (CCC4IoT-2012)

in conjunction with

The 5th IEEE/ACM International Conference on

Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2012)

November 5-8, 2012

Chicago, Illinois, USA - http://www.cloudbus.org/ucc2012/

http://www.derby.ac.uk/computing/research/ccc4iot2012

Aims and Scope

The first International Workshop on Cloud Computing Challenges for enabling the Internet of Things (CCC4IoT-2012) is dedicated to the theories, practices and concepts of advancing Clouds to enable the realization of Future Internet and specifically, the Internet of Things (IoT). During the last years, Clouds and inter-Clouds (an initiative to enable Clouds working together) are emerging as significant e-infrastructures for performing and delivering business and science. While Clouds are becoming popular by providing a new supplement, consumption, delivery and efficient Internet model, IoT has been emerged as a world-wide network of inter-connected physical objects uniquely addressable, based on standard communication protocols. IoT is associated with technologies such as ad hoc networks, near-field communications, femtocells, real-time localization, and embedded tags and sensors as a way to transform everyday objects into smart objects which in turn, lead to a shared next generation Internet, what is also known as Future Internet. A notable opportunity – that is the CCC4IoT-2012 scope – is to what are the challenges for Clouds as facilitating e-infrastructures to meet the requirements towards an IoT realization.  CCC4IoT-2012 aims to provide a forum for original discussion and prompt future directions on how to support the harvesting, storage, processing and exploitation of real-time and dynamically generated available inter-connected objects in a reliable, scalable and secure manner.

The main topic areas include, but are not limited to:

• Internet of Things, Architecture, Components, RFID, Sensors and Actuator Technologies
• Inter-networking and Radio Access Protocols, Technologies, Near Field Communications, Femtocells
• Inter-operability and Inter-cooperative Protocols, Standards and Technologies
• Concurrency and Synchronization, Wireless and Mobile Communications, Protocols and Standards
• Data/Text Mining, Data Clustering, Graph Partitioning, Collective Decision Making
• Multi-objective Optimization Techniques in Dynamic and Real-time Computational Environments
• Social Networks Analysis, Formal Concept Analysis, Temporal Analysis, Topic Maps
• Ad-Hoc Networks, RF Modeling, Object and Context Representation, Ontology Management
• Meta-Data, Annotation, Intra-/Inter- Tagging, Semantic Web, Web Services, Multi-Agents
• Service Architectures, Discovery, Retrieval, Scheduling, Allocation, Monitoring
• Mobility Management, Traffic Models, Process Workflow, Resource and Device Management
• Data Centers, Real-time and (Historical) Data Management, Data Growth, Storage, Implications
• Social Cloud, Crowd Sourcing, Crowd Dynamics, Crowd Source Data Modeling, Management and Analysis
• Context-Aware Infrastructures and Services, Smart Objects, Positioning Location-Based Services
• Security, Privacy, Identity, Trust and Reputation Management

Organizing Committee

 

Workshop Chair:

Nik Bessis, University of Derby, UK

n.bessis at derby.ac.uk

Dora Varvarigou, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Workshop Programee Committee Members (TBC):

Vassiliki Andronikou, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Ashiq Anjum, University of Derby, UK

Simon Andrews, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Eleana Asimakopoulou, University of Derby, UK

Liz Bacon, University of Greenwich, UK

Kevin Curran, Ulster University, Ireland

Ciprian Dobre, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania

Tim French, University of Bedfordshire, UK

Natalia Kryvinska, University of Vienna, Austria

Maozhen Li, Brunel University, UK

Lu Liu, University of Derby, UK

Minhua Ma (Eunice), University of Glasgow, UK

Paul Mc Kevitt, Ulster University, Ireland

Navonil Mustafee, Swansea University, UK

Florin Pop, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania

Noel Sharkey, University of Sheffield, UK

Stelios Sotiriadis, University of Derby, UK

Sergio Toral Marn, University of Seville, Spain

Ipke Wachsmuth, Bielefeld University, Germany

Submission

All papers will be peer reviewed by at least two or more independent referees of the Workshop programme committee and accepted on the basis of their scientific merit, originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition.

Submit a full paper of at most 8 pages (IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Manuscripts style: two columns, single-spaced), including figures and references, using 10 fonts, and number each page. To confirm the IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Author Guidelines see: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/cscps/submission The papers must be submitted electronically via the EasyChair system that is available from the UCC-2012 website, see: http://www.cloudbus.org/ucc2012/

Accepted workshop papers will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press. Authors of accepted papers, or at least one of them, must register and present their work at the conference otherwise their papers will be removed from the digital library after the conference. Extended version of distinguished workshop papers will be published in a book volume and/or a special issue of an international journal.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Due:          July 13, 2012

Notification of Acceptance:             August 10, 2012

Final Manuscript Due:                      September 7, 2012

Author Registration Due: September 7, 2012

Symposium Dates:                             November 5-8, 2012

Contact

Nik Bessis, University of Derby, UK

n.bessis at derby.ac.uk

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The 17th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD 2013)

Call For Papers PAKDD 2013

The 17th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 

Gold Coast, Australia

Conference Website

http://pakdd2013.pakdd.org/

Submission System

            https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/PAKDD2013/

Important Dates

            Paper submission due: Oct. 1    (Mon). 2012

            Notification to author: Dec. 19  (Wed). 2012

            Camera ready due: Jan. 6    (Sun). 2013

            *[23:59:59 Pacific Time]

Conference Scope

The Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) is a leading international conference in the areas of data mining and knowledge discovery (KDD). It provides an international forum for researchers and industry practitioners to share their new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences from all KDD related areas, including data mining, data warehousing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, databases, statistics, knowledge engineering, visualization, and decision-making systems. The conference calls for research papers reporting original investigation results and industrial papers reporting real data mining applications and system development experience.

Topics

The topics of relevance for the conference papers include but not limited to the following:

            * Novel models and algorithms

            * Clustering

            * Classification

            * Ranking

            * Association analysis

            * Anomaly detection

            * Data pre-processing

            * Feature extraction and selection

            * Mining heterogeneous data

            * Mining multi-source data

            * Mining sequential data

            * Mining spatial and temporal data

            * Mining unstructured and semi-structured data

            * Mining graph and network data

            * Parallel, distributed, and high performance data mining on the cloud platform

            * Privacy preserving data mining

            * Mining high dimensional data

            * Mining uncertain data

            * Mining imbalanced data

            * Mining dynamic/streaming data

            * Statistical methods for data mining

            * Visual data mining

            * Interactive and online mining

            * Mining behavioral data

            * Mining multimedia data

            * Mining scientific databases

            * Ubiquitous knowledge discovery

            * Agent-based data mining

            * Mining social networks

            * Financial data mining

            * Fraud and risk analysis

            * Security and intrusion detection

            * Opinion mining and sentiment analysis

            * Post-processing including quality assessment and validation

            * Integration of data warehousing, OLAP and data mining

            * Human, domain, organizational and social factors in data mining

            * Applications to healthcare, bioinformatics, computational chemistry,

            * Eco-informatics, marketing, online gaming, etc

All paper submissions will be handled electronically. Detailed instructions are provided on the conference home page.

Paper Submission

Each submitted paper should include an abstract up to 200 words. It should also adhere to the double-blind review policy and not longer than 12 single-spaced pages with 10pt font size. Authors are strongly encouraged to use Springer LNCS/LNAI manuscript submission guidelines (available at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html) for their initial submissions. All papers must be submitted electronically through Microsoft's Conference Management Service (CMT) in PDF format only.

The submitted papers must not be previously published anywhere, and must not be under consideration by any other conferences or journal during the PAKDD review process. Submitting a paper to the conference means that if the paper were accepted, at least one author will attend the conference to present the paper. For no-show authors, their affiliations will receive a notification. The program committee chairs are not allowed to submit papers to the conference for a fair review process.

All papers will be double-blind reviewed by the Program Committee on the basis of technical quality, relevance to data mining, originality, significance, and clarity. Papers that do not comply with the Submission Guidelines will be rejected without review.

Before submitting your paper, please carefully read and agree with the PAKDD submission policy and no-show policy: http://pakdd.togaware.com/policy.html

Conference Officers

Honorary Co-chairs

            * Jiawei Han. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,USA

            * Ramamohanarao Kotagiri, University of Melbourne, Australia

            * Graham Williams. Australia Taxation Office, Australia

Conference Co-chairs

            * Hiroshi Motoda, AFOSR/AOARD and Osaka University, Japan

            * Longbing Cao. University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Program Committee Co-chairs

            * Jian Pei. Simon Fraser University, Canada

            * Vincent S. Tseng. National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Local Arrangement Co-chairs

            * Vladimir Estivill-Castro. Griffith University (Gold Coast), Australia

            * Xue Li, University of Queensland, Australia

            * Richi Nayak, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

            * Xinhua Zhu, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Workshop Co-chairs

            * Jiuyong Li. University of Sourth Australia, Australia

            * Kay Chen Tan. National University of Singapore, Singapore

            * Bo Liu. Guangdong University of Technology, China

Tutorial Co-chairs

            * Tu Bao Ho. Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan 

            * Mengjie Zhang. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Award Chair

            * Chengqi Zhang, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Sponsorship Co-chair

            * Yue Xu, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Publicity Co-chairs

            * P.Krishna Reddy, The International Institute of Information      * Technology, Hyderabad, India

            * Yifeng Zeng, Aalborg University, Denmark

            * Xin Wang, University of Calgary, Canada

            * Zhihong Deng, Peking University, China

Further Information

For further information, please contact the Program Committee Chairs by pakdd13-program@pakdd.org .

General inquiries

            * Longbing Cao

             University of Technology Sydney, Australia

             Email: pakdd13@pakdd.org

             Phone: (61)2-9514-4477

             Fax: (61)2-9514-1807

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Wirtschaftsinformatik 2013 / Business Information Systems

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

11. International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik 2013 (WI2013) February

28 - March 1, 2013 / University of Leipzig, Germany

The International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (Business Information Systems) is the leading academic conference in the German speaking IS community and welcomes research papers in English. WI2013 is supported by the German Computer Science Society (GI) and the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB). It has been recognized as "A" conference besides ECIS and ICIS in past rankings.

WI is a biennial conference which is organized by the University of Leipzig in 2013. It offers a scientific platform for a broad spectrum of topics in the area of Business Information Systems. Themed "innovation, integration, individualization", WI2013 emphasizes the role of IT for new application fields, the integration of processes and the increasing involvement of users.

RESEARCH TRACKS
Unpublished and original research papers are invited for the eleven research tracks of WI2013. For each track, two chairs have established an international program committee which assures a thorough double-blind review of the submissions. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and the AIS e-Library.

- Track 1: Individualization and consumer orientation
- Track 2: Integrated systems in manufacturing industries
- Track 3: Integrated systems in service industries
- Track 4: Innovation and business models
- Track 5: Information and knowledge management
- Track 6: Business process and service management
- Track 7: Sustainability and security
- Track 8: Modelling and development methods
- Track 9: Integration and architectures
- Track 10: Research methods and philosophy
- Track 11: General Track

**Submission of papers: August 12,2012
**Notification of acceptance: November 14, 2012 **Submission of camera-ready
papers: December 19, 2012

PANELS AND TUTORIALS
Besides the research tracks, proposals for panels and tutorials are invited.
While panels offer a platform for the discussion of controversial topics in
the IS field, tutorials focus on the structured dissemination of established
knowledge. Proposals should not exceed four pages and include a brief
description of the title, the topics and the participants. We encourage
proposals that refer to the main themes of WI2013.

**Submission of proposals: August 12, 2012 **Notification of acceptance:
November 14, 2012

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
The Doctoral Consortium (DC) is organized prior to WI2013 at February 25 and
26, 2013. It offers a forum for doctoral students in the IS field to present
their work and to receive feed-back from a team of professors. Applications
to the DC require a finished master degree.

**Submission of papers (short version): October 31, 2012 **Invitation of
doctoral students: December 1, 2012 **Submission of papers (long version):
January 31, 2013

STUDENT CONSORTIUM
The Student Consortium (SC) is an opportunity for master students to obtain
first experiences at academic conferences. Students are invited to submit
papers, which will be reviewed by the program committee and published in a
special section in the conference proceedings.

**Submission of papers: October 31, 2012 **Invitation of students: December
1, 2012 **Submission of camera-ready papers: December 19, 2012

CONFERENCE CHAIRS
Rainer Alt, Bogdan Franczyk
Information Systems Institute, University of Leipzig, Germany

WEBSITES
www.wi2013.de
www.iwi.uni-leipzig.de

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1st International Workshop on Pedagogically–driven Serious Games (PDSG 2012) @ EC-TEL 2012

Call for Papers

PDSG 2012

1st International Workshop on Pedagogically–driven Serious Games (PDSG 2012)

Saarbrücken (Germany), 18 September 2012

http://www.cyntelix.com/pdsg2012.aspx

Deadline for submissions: 16-07-12

In conjunction with the 

Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2012) 

http://ec-tel.eu/

Flyer Pedagocially-Driven Serious Games'12

View more documents from Ralf Klamma

Description

Technology Enhanced Learning is a promising area where Serious Games can have an impact beyond pure entertainment. Despite this potential, two issues stand in the way of achieving learning effects:

• Few pedagogical theories are sufficiently formalized to allow implementation, therefore Serious Games seldom fully utilize the potential of pedagogy.
• Even if present, pedagogical principles are implicitly implemented in the game story, structure, and characters, so that it is very difficult to test different theories on the same game mechanics. This results in low reusability and high costs of pedagogically-driven serious games that hinder their widespread use.

To address these issues, this workshop focuses on:

• Formalizations of pedagogical theories potentially capable to drive the elements in a game's world, such as narrative and characters' behaviour.
• Game frameworks based on storytelling, explicit game mechanics and intelligent agents that can provide a programmable environment to implement pedagogical formalizations

Expected participants and domains addressed

Participants to the workshop are researchers from the following areas:

• Serious games and Technology-Enhanced Learning research in general
• Agent technologies (especially in an interactive narrative context). Efforts in the Agent community such as Pogamut that connect agent platforms to games like Unreal Tournament can be the ground where these approaches can be implemented.
• Storytelling and Interactive narrative research; narrative engines such as Brutus, Minstrel and Mexica.
• Pedagogy theories/frameworks especially at a stage close to or already formalized.

Topics

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Formalizations of pedagogical theories for the purposes of serious games
• Game frameworks that provide a programmable environment to implement pedagogical formalizations, based on any of the following:
• Storytelling
• explicit game mechanics
• intelligent agents 
• Approaches to modeling the interdependencies between pedagogy, storytelling and game mechanics in serious games and the translation of these interdependencies into agent behaviour 
• Empirical studies addressing the interdependencies between pedagogy, narrative and storytelling and game mechanics
• Architectures for serious games that allow reusability
• Existing programmable platforms, such as Pogamut, that connect agent platforms to games
• Approaches to “programmable” narrative and storytelling in serious games 
• Approaches to “programmable” intelligent agents in serious games

Submissions
We encourage submissions of work that can be at all stages of development. Contributions are expected in the following form:

Full papers: max. 10 pages
Position/short papers: max. 4 pages
Demo papers: max. 4 pages

Proposals for demonstrations will be evaluated based on submitted demo papers. The following needs to be specified:

• the purpose of the system to be demonstrated and how this is relevant to the theme of the workshop
• the technology used
• the duration of the demo (not exceeding 30 minutes)

Important Dates
Submission deadline: Mon 16-07-12

Paper Submission Procedure
Submissions will be handled by EasyChair at:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pdsg2012

Submissions should use the Springer LNCS template. We encourage you to produce your submission using LaTeX as typesetting tool and the respective LaTeX template.

Accepted authors will be invited to extend their contributions for a special issue in the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning.
Contact
Contact chairs at: pdsg2012 __at__ easychair.org

Twitter: @PDSG2012

Organizers

• Stefano Bocconi (Cyntelix and Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
• Ralf Klamma (RWTH Aachen, Germany);
• Yulia Bachvarova (Cyntelix, the Netherlands)

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Requirements Engineering - Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ'13)

Call for Papers

R E F S Q ' 1 3 - Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality

April 8-11 2013, Essen, Germany

Special Theme: Interdisciplinary RE

Abstract Submission: 5th November 2012

Paper Submission: 12th November 2012

http://www.refsq.org

Requirements Engineering (RE) is a dominant factor that influences the quality of software, systems and services. The REFSQ working conference series is well established as one of the leading international forums for discussing RE and its many relations to quality. The first REFSQ took place in 1994, and since 2010 REFSQ has been organised as a stand-alone conference. In April 2013, we again welcome participants to attend REFSQ'13, which will be held in Essen, Germany.


Working Conference Format

REFSQ has a long tradition of being a highly structured and interactive forum. Each session is organised in order to provoke discussion among the presenters of papers, pre-assigned discussants, and all the other
participants.


Scope

REFSQ 2013 seeks reports of novel ideas and techniques that enhance the quality of RE's products and processes, as well as reflections on current research and industrial RE practices. We invite submissions on any aspect of RE. We encourage researchers and practitioners from the RE, software engineering, information systems, service science, and embedded systems fields to present original work. We have chosen "Interdisciplinary RE" as the special theme for REFSQ'13. In addition to general papers on RE and
quality, we therefore encourage submissions that highlight the interplay of RE with related disciplines such as software architecture, quality assurance, user interface design, project management, and agile software
development. Contributions from further related areas such as systems engineering, economics, and management are also very welcome for the insights they provide to RE.


Call for Papers

We invite original submissions in various categories:
- Full research papers (up to 15 pages), including solution papers, empirical studies, surveys, and comparative studies
- Experience reports (up to 15 pages), describing positive and negative experiences
- Vision papers (up to 6 pages) stating where the research in the field should be heading towards
- Problem statements (up to 6 pages) describing open issues of practical or theoretical nature
- Research previews (up to 6 pages) reporting research results at an early stage

Papers must be submitted through Easychair at
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=refsq13


Other Events

REFSQ 2013 also calls for submissions for:
- Half-day workshops focussing on topics related to REFSQ
- A doctoral symposium in which PhD students present their RE-related research
- Empirical studies to be run during REFSQ and in collaboration with companies


Important dates

Abstract Submission: 5th November 2012
Paper Submission: 12th November 2012
Conference: 8-11 April 2013


General Chair

Klaus Pohl – Univ. of Duisburg Essen, Germany


Program Co-Chairs

Joerg Doerr – Fraunhofer IESE, Germany <joerg.doerr@iese.fraunhofer.de>
Andreas L. Opdahl – Univ. of Bergen, Norway <Andreas.Opdahl@uib.no>


Empirical Track Co-Chairs

Daniel M. Berry – Univ. of Waterloo, Canada Norbert Seyff – Univ. of Zurich,
Switzerland


Workshop Chairs

Raul Mazo – Univ. of Paris 1 - Sorbonne, France Camille Salinesi – Univ. of
Paris 1 - Sorbonne, France


Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs

Oscar Pastor – Univ. of Valencia, Spain
Roel Wieringa – Univ. of Twente, Netherlands


Industry Track Co-Chairs

Kai Petersen – Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden Thorsten Weyer –
Univ. of Duisburg-Essen, Germany


Programme Committee

Aybuke Aurum, University of New South Wales Brian Berenbach, Siemens
Corporate Research Dan Berry, University of Waterloo Sjaak Brinkkemper,
Utrecht University David Callele, University of Saskatchewan Jane
Cleland-Huang, DePaul University Daniela Damian, University of Victoria Eric
Dubois, CRP Henri Tudor Armin Eberlein, American University of Sharjah
Xavier Franch, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Samuel Fricker, Blekinge
Institute of Technology Donald Gause, Binghamton University Vincenzo
Gervasi, University of Pisa Martin Glinz, University of Zurich Tony
Gorschek, Blekinge Institute of Technology Olly Gotel, Independent
Researcher Paul Gruenbacher, Johannes Kepler University Linz Peter Haumer,
IBM Rational Patrick Heymans, University of Namur Matthias Jarke, RWTH
Aachen University Natalia Juristo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Erik
Kamsties, Univ. of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund Peter Karpati,
Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology Marjo Kauppinen, Helsinki
University of Technology Eric Knauss, University of Victoria Kim Lauenroth,
adesso AG Soren Lauesen, IT University of Copenhagen Pericles Loucopoulos,
Loughborough University Nazim Madhavji, University of Western Ontario
Raimundas Matulevicius, University of Tartu Raul Mazo, University of Paris 1
- Sorbonne John Mylopoulos, University of Toronto Cornelius Ncube,
Bournemouth University Bashar Nuseibeh, Open University Barbara Paech,
Universität Heidelberg Oscar Pastor Lopez, Polytechnical University of
Valencia Anne Persson, University of Skövde Kai Petersen, Blekinge Institute
of Technology Jolita Ralyte, University of Geneva Gil Regev, Ecole Polyt.
Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland Bjorn Regnell, Lund University Colette
Rolland, University of Paris 1 - Sorbonne Camille Salinesi, University of
Paris 1 - Sorbonne Kristian Sandahl, Linköping University Pete Sawyer,
Lancaster University Kurt Schneider, Leibniz Universität Hannover Norbert
Seyff, University of Zurich Guttorm Sindre, Norwegian Univ. of Science and
Technology Janis Stirna, Royal Institute of Technology Christer Thörn,
Jönköping University Inge Van De Weerd, VU University Amsterdam Thorsten
Weyer, University of Duisburg-Essen Roel Wieringa, University of Twente Eric
Yu, University of Toronto Didar Zowghi, University of Technology, Sydney

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Deadline extension: Learning within and from the 'Smart Cities' (SCiLearn 2012 ) @ ICWL 2012

**** DEADLINE for paper submission HAS BEEN EXTENDED to: JUNE, 25 at noon ****

**** Workshop proceedings will be published by Springer LNCS ****

"Learning within and from the 'Smart Cities'" (SCiLearn 2012)

Sinaia (Romania), September 2-4, 2012

co-located at ICWL 2012

http://www.hkws.org/conference/icwl2012/

organized by

Dept. of Science and Technology of Education& IaD School of Tor Vergata

University of Rome

and

PH Schwäbisch Gmünd University of Education.

Temporary workshop website:

http://www.scuolaiad.it/SCiLearn2012/

IMPORTANT DATES
---------------
* June 25 at noon, 2012: Deadline for submission of contributions (extended)
* July 5, 2012: Authors' Notification on the review process results
* July 15, 2012: Authors' Registration Deadline and upload of Final Camera-Ready Manuscript

TOPICS OF INTEREST
------------------

Papers are solicited on the following 'open' list of topics:

• Technological Ecosystems supporting learning within and from the 'smart cities' (toward 'web-mobile-internet of thing' integrated
environments)
• Future 'smart cities' learning scenarios (contexts and methods) • Ecological monitoring and visualization of flows, behaviours, experience's styles and 'smart cities' learning • The impact of contextualization, glocalities, identities • Educational Ecosystems: from ''intelligence' to autopoietic education
(edupoiesis)

PAPER FORMAT and PUBLICATION
----------------------------

Accepted workshop contributions will be published with Springer.
Authors are thus required to submit their manuscript according to the LNCS proceedings format:
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

Papers should be no exceed 10 pages.

In addition to the ICWL workshop proceedings an extended version of selected workshop papers will be published in a special issue of the IxD&A Journal (ISSN 1826-9745)

SUBMISSIONS
-----------
Please submit your manuscript using the IxD&A submission System at:
http://www.mifav.uniroma2.it/idea2010/login.php

CONTACTS:
---------
Carlo Giovannella - giovannella@scuolaiad.it Alke Martens - alke.martens@googlemail.com

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Special Issue on: "Social Networking Sites for Formal Learning" - IJSMILE

International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments  (IJSMILE)

Call for Papers

Special Issue on: "Social Networking Sites for Formal Learning"

Editor:
Dr. Qiyun Wang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

In recent years, social networking sites such as Facebook, Google +, Twitter, weblogs and wikis have been popularly used by young people and adults to share information and interact with each other. These platforms were not initially designed for educational purposes. Like any new technology, however, they have great potential for teaching and learning.

The objectives of this special issue are twofold. They are firstly to share pedagogical, social and technical affordances of social networking sites for formal learning in the secondary school or tertiary education context, and secondly to address implementation issues, concerns or challenges that teachers or students may have when they are using social networking sites in real practice. The discussion in this special issue will have implications for the effective use of social networking sites in education.

The issue welcomes conceptual papers on technological affordances and challenges of social networking sites for teaching and learning, and empirical research papers and case studies about using social media to support teaching and learning in various contexts.

Subject Coverage

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Social networking sites (e.g. weblog, wiki, Facebook, Twitter) for learning
• Pedagogical, social and technical affordances of social media for teaching and learning
• Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning
• Issues and concerns with using social media for learning
• Web-based collaborative and interactive learning
• Using social media to support collaborative learning
• Formal learning with social technologies
• Interactive and social learning
• Course design and development based on social media

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.

Important Dates

Full paper submission: 30 September, 2012

Notification of acceptance: 15 November, 2012

Final submission: 31 December, 2012

Editors and Notes

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please go to Online Submissions of Papers. If you experience any problems submitting your paper online, please contact submissions@inderscience.com, describing the exact problem you experience. Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the names of the Guest Editors

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PostDoc/PhD positions in the domain of cloud computing, Rennes, France

The University of Rennes 1 (France) has two open positions for a PhD student
and a postdoctoral researcher in the domain of cloud computing.


Context: Cloud computing systems are currently composed of large numbers of
relatively inexpensive computers, interconnected by standard IP routers and
supported by stock disk drives. However, many demanding applications have
now reached a fundamental limit in their ability to scale out using
traditional machines. Future performance improvements will derive from the
use of high-end specialized equipment in addition to standard hardware: GPUs
of course, but also FPGAs, programmable routers, and advanced storage
technologies. In this context the European project HARNESS investigates: (i)
how cloud providers may offer such extremely heterogeneous hardware to its
users; and (ii) how cloud customers may make use of these heterogeneous
resources to run their applications such that they exhibit the best possible
price-performance tradeoff.


Open PhD student position: Multi-resource optimization for application
hosting in heterogeneous clouds http://www.conpaas.eu/phd-position/

The goal of this thesis is to explore ways to host flexible applications on
heterogeneous cloud systems. An application may be hosted in different ways,
for example by mapping it on an FPGA and a conventional storage system, or
alternatively on a set of normal VMs connected to high-end storage systems
using high-end programmable routers. We will investigate: (i) how to express
the requirements of such flexible applications; (ii) how to predict the
costs and performance they would exhibit in a number of possible
configurations; and (iii) control systems capable of dynamically adjusting
the use of resources according to the needs of the application and the
availability of specialized resources. The work will be based on ConPaaS, an
open-source Platform-as-a-Service environment developed in another project.
The PhD will be supervised by Guillaume Pierre.


Open postdoctoral research position: deployment and dynamic reconfiguration
of cloud applications in heterogeneous clouds.
http://www.conpaas.eu/open-postdoc/

The postdoctoral researcher will investigate the ways to describe flexible
applications capable of executing on a variety of heterogeneous hardware
resources. We envisage component-based architectures where an application
may provide multiple versions of the same component dedicated to different
hardware platforms. The researcher will investigate and build mechanisms to
deploy such applications in heterogeneous clouds, and to dynamically
reconfigure an application while it is executing. For example, an
application may start over a set of conventional virtual machines, but when
load increases it becomes more efficient to dynamically re-deploy it over an
FPGA. The work will be based on ConPaaS, an open-source
Platform-as-a-Service environment developed in another project. This
position implies tight collaboration with other partners of the HARNESS
project, who are in charge of offering access to a variety of heterogeneous
hardware devices.

Note: These two positions are funded by the HARNESS European project. They
will be realized in close collaboration with the other members of the
HARNESS project: Imperial College London, EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), Zuse
Institute Berlin, SAP (the world leader of e-business solutions), and
Maxeller (an FPGA manufacturer). Note that this consortium is of
exceptionally high quality.


Required qualifications:

* Strong expertise in large-scale distributed systems, Cloud computing
or high-performance computing
* Excellent programming skills in Linux environments
* Good communication and writing skills
* Good command of English
* Knowledge of French is not required for this position.


Start date: November 1st 2012.


Duration: The PhD position is offered for a period of 3 years. The postdoc
position is offered for one year, renewable up to a maximum of
3 years.


Location: Rennes is the capital city of Britanny, in the western part of
France. It is easy to reach thanks to the high-speed train line to Paris.
Rennes is a lively city and a major center for higher education and
research. The thesis will take place within the IRISA research center, which
is internationally recognized for its research in the domain of information
and communication sciences.


Contact: Guillaume Pierre (gpierre@cs.vu.nl). Please send a CV, transcript
of grades, and a description of your past achievements in a domain close to
Cloud computing.


References:

* ConPaaS: a Platform for Hosting Elastic Cloud
Applications. Guillaume Pierre and Corina Stratan. Accepted for
publication in IEEE Internet Computing, 2012 (to appear).

* Resource Provisioning of Web Applications in Heterogeneous
Clouds. Jiang Dejun, Guillaume Pierre and Chi-Hung Chi. In
Proceedings of the WebApps Conference, June 2011.

* Autonomous Resource Provisioning for Multi-Service Web
Applications. Jiang Dejun, Guillaume Pierre and Chi-Hung Chi. In
Proceedings of the International WWW conference, April 2010.

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The 13th IEEE/ACM Int. Symp. on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid 2013)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 13th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on

Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing

(CCGrid 2013)

Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands

May 13-16, 2013

http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/ccgrid2013

Rapid advances in architectures, networks, and systems and middleware technologies are leading to new concepts in and platforms for computing, ranging from Clusters and Grids to Clouds and Datacenters. CCGrid is a series of very successful conferences, sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Scalable Computing (TCSC) and the ACM, with the overarching goal of bringing together international researchers, developers, and users to provide an international forum to present leading research activities and results on a broad range of topics related to these concepts and platforms, and their applications. The conference features keynotes, technical presentations, workshops, tutorials, and posters, as
well as the SCALE challenge featuring live demonstrations.

In 2013, CCGrid will come to the Netherlands for the first time, and will be held in Delft, a historical, picturesque city that is less than one hour away from Amsterdam-Schiphol airport. The main conference will be held on May 14-16 (Tuesday to Thursday), with tutorials and affiliated workshops taking place on May 13 (Monday).


**** IMPORTANT DATES ****
Papers Due: 12 November 2012
Author Notifications: 24 January 2013
Final Papers Due: 22 February 2013


**** TOPICS OF INTEREST ****
CCGrid 2013 will have a focus on important and immediate issues that are significantly influencing all aspects of cluster, cloud and grid computing. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Applications and Experiences: Applications to real and complex problems in science, engineering, business, and society; User studies; Experiences with large-scale deployments, systems, or applications
* Architecture: System architectures, design and deployment; Power and cooling; Security and reliability; High availability solutions
* Autonomic Computing and Cyberinfrastructure: Self-managed behavior, models and technologies;
Autonomic paradigms and systems (control-based, bio-inspired, emergent, etc.); Bio-inspired
optimizations and computing
* Cloud Computing: Cloud architectures; Software tools and techniques for clouds
* Multicore and Accelerator-based Computing: Software and application techniques to utilize multicore architectures and accelerators in clusters, grids, and clouds
* Performance Modeling and Evaluation: Performance prediction and modeling; Monitoring and
evaluation tools; Analysis of system and application performance; Benchmarks and testbeds
* Programming Models, Systems, and Fault-Tolerant Computing: Programming models and environments for cluster, cloud, and grid computing; Fault-tolerant systems, programs and algorithms; Systems software to support efficient computing
* Scheduling and Resource Management: Techniques to schedule jobs and resources on cluster, cloud, and grid computing platforms; SLA definition and enforcement


**** PAPER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES ****
Authors are invited to submit papers electronically in PDF format. Submitted manuscripts should be structured as technical papers and may not exceed 8 letter-size (8.5 x 11) pages including figures, tables and references using the IEEE format for conference proceedings. Submissions not conforming to these guidelines may be returned without review. Authors should make sure that their file will print on a printer
that uses letter-size (8.5 x 11) paper. The official language of the conference is English. All manuscripts will be reviewed and will be judged on correctness, originality, technical strength, significance, quality of presentation, and interest and relevance to the conference attendees.

Submitted papers must represent original unpublished research that is not currently under review for any other conference or journal. Papers not following these guidelines will be rejected without review and further
action may be taken, including (but not limited to) notifications sent to the heads of the institutions of the authors and sponsors of the conference. Submissions received after the due date, exceeding the page limit, or not appropriately structured may not be considered. Authors may contact the conference chairs for more information. The proceedings will be published through the IEEE Computer Society Press, USA, and will be made available online through the IEEE Digital Library.


**** CALL FOR TUTORIAL AND WORKSHOP PROPOSALS ****
Tutorials and workshops affiliated with CCGrid 2013 will be held on May 13 (Monday). For more information on the tutorials and workshops and for the complete Call for Tutorial and Workshop Proposals, please see the conference website.


**** GENERAL CHAIR ****
Dick Epema, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands


**** PROGRAM CHAIR ****
Thomas Fahringer, University of Innsbruck, Austria


**** PROGRAM VICE-CHAIRS ****
Rosa Badia, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain Henri Bal, Vrije
Universiteit, the Netherlands Marios Dikaiakos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Kirk Cameron, VirginiaTech, USA Daniel Katz, University of Chicago & Argonne
Nat Lab, USA Kate Keahey, Argonne National Laboratory, USA Martin Schulz,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA Douglas Thain, University of
Notre Dame, USA Cheng-Zhong Xu, Shenzhen Inst. of Advanced Techn, China


**** WORKSHOPS CHAIR ****
Shantenu Jha, Rutgers and Louisana State University, USA


**** DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM CHAIRS ****
Yogesh Simmhan, University of Southern California, USA Ana Varbanescu, Delft
Univ of Technology, the Netherlands


**** SUBMISSIONS AND PROCEEDINGS CHAIR **** Pavan Balaji, Argonne National
Laboratory, USA


**** FINANCE AND REGISTRATION CHAIR **** Alexandru Iosup, Delft Univ of
Technology, the Netherlands


**** PUBLICITY CHAIRS ****
Nazareno Andrade, University Federal de Campina Grance, Brazil Gabriel
Antoniu, INRIA, France Bahman Javadi, University of Western Sysney,
Australia Ioan Raicu, Illinois Institute of Technology and Argonne National
Laboratory, USA


**** CYBER CHAIR ****
Stephen van der Laan, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands

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