Intelligent Collaborative e-Learning Systems and Applications is a major research theme in CSCL and CSCW research community. It comprises a variety of research topics that focus on developing systems that are more powerful and flexible and also more adaptable to the learning process and thus provide better answers to the paradigmatic principles of on-line collaborative learning and work. The chapters collected in this book provide new insights, findings and approaches both on the analysis and the development of more powerful e-collaboration settings. Researchers will find in this book the latest trends in these research topics. On the other hand, academics will find practical insights on how to use conceptual and experimental approaches in their daily tasks. Finally, developers from CSCL community can be inspired and put in practice the proposed models and evaluate them for the specific purposes of their own work and context.

Intelligent Collaborative e-Learning Systems and Applications is a major research theme in CSCL and CSCW research community. It comprises a variety of research topics that focus on developing systems that are more powerful and flexible and also more adaptable to the learning process and thus provide better answers to the paradigmatic principles of on-line collaborative learning and work. The chapters collected in this book provide new insights, findings and approaches both on the analysis and the development of more powerful e-collaboration settings. Researchers will find in this book the latest trends in these research topics. On the other hand, academics will find practical insights on how to use conceptual and experimental approaches in their daily tasks. Finally, developers from CSCL community can be inspired and put in practice the proposed models and evaluate them for the specific purposes of their own work and context.

As part of e-learning, adaptive systems are more specialized and focus on the adaptation of learning content and presentation of this content. An adaptive system focuses on how knowledge is learned and pays attention to the activities, cognitive structures, and context of the learning material. The adaptive term refers to the automatic adaptation of the system to the learner. The needs of the learner are borne by the system itself. The learner did not ask to change the parameters of the system to his own needs; it is rather the needs of the learner that will be supposed by the system. The system adapts according to this necessity. Personalization and Collaboration in Adaptive E-Learning is an essential reference book that aims to describe the specific steps in designing a scenario for a collaborative learning activity in the particular context of personalization in adaptive systems and the key decisions that need to be made by the teacher-learner. By applying theoretical and practical aspects of personalization in adaptive systems and applications within education, this collection features coverage on a broad range of topics that include adaptive teaching, personalized learning, and instructional design. This book is ideally designed for instructional designers, curriculum developers, educational software developers, IT specialists, educational administrators, professionals, professors, researchers, and students seeking current research on comparative studies and the pedagogical issues of personalized and collaborative learning.

Technology-Enhanced Systems and Tools for Collaborative Learning Scaffolding is a major research theme in CSCL and CSCW research community. This book presents up-to-date research approaches for developing technology-enhanced systems and tools to support functional online collaborative learning and work settings. It comprises a variety of research topics that span from the study of frameworks and infrastructures that foster collaborative learning and work through the application of different methods (distributed e-learning repositories, content creation and customization, social networks, collaborative ontologies building, and educational games) to the use of personalization and adaptation techniques to support the development of more powerful e-collaboration settings, including methodologies and tools for analyzing students' interactions with the aim to increase students' collaborative behaviors, performance and group organization. Researchers will find in this book the latest trends in these research topics, which gives them the opportunity to deepen further on the above issues and to extend their knowledge to other areas. Academics will find practical insights on how to use conceptual and experimental approaches in their daily tasks. Developers from CSCL community can be inspired and put in practice the proposed models and evaluate them for the specific purposes of their own work and context.

Adaptation and personalization have been extensively studied in CSCL research community aiming to design intelligent systems that adaptively support eLearning processes and collaboration. Yet, with the fast development in Internet technologies, especially with the emergence of new data technologies and the mobile technologies, new opportunities and perspectives are opened for advanced adaptive and personalized systems. Adaptation and personalization are posing new research and development challenges to nowadays CSCL systems. In particular, adaptation should be focused in a multi-dimensional way (cognitive, technological, context-aware and personal). Moreover, it should address the particularities of both individual learners and group collaboration. As a consequence, the aim of this book is twofold. On the one hand, it discusses the latest advances and findings in the area of intelligent adaptive and personalized learning systems. On the other hand it analyzes the new implementation perspectives for intelligent adaptive learning and collaborative systems that are brought by the advances in scripting languages, IMS LD, educational modeling languages and learning activity management systems. Given the variety of learning needs as well as the existence of different technological solutions, the book exemplifies the methodologies and best practices through several case studies and adaptive real-world collaborative learning scenarios, which show the advancement in the field of analysis, design and implementation of intelligent adaptive and personalized systems.

Collaboration in highly distributed organizations of people, robots, and autonomous systems is and must be revolutionized by engineering augmentation. The aim is to augment humans’ abilities at work and, through this augmentation, improve organizations’ abilities to accomplish their missions. This book establishes the theoretical foundations and design principles of collaborative e-Work, e-Business and e-Service, their models and applications, design and implementation techniques. The fundamental premise is that without effective e-Work and e-Services, the potential of emerging activities, such as e-Commerce, virtual manufacturing, tele-robotic medicine, automated construction, smart energy grid, cyber-supported agriculture, and intelligent transportation cannot be fully materialized. Typically, workers and managers of such value networks are frustrated with complex information systems, originally designed and built to simplify and improve performance. Even if the human-computer interface for such systems is well designed, the information and task overloads can be overwhelming. Effective delivery of expected outcomes may not occur. Challenges and emerging solutions in the context of the recently developed CCT, Collaborative Control Theory, are described, with emphasis on issues of computer-supported and communication-enabled integration, coordination and augmented collaboration. Research results and analyses of engineering design methods and complex systems management techniques are explained and illustrated.

Intelligent Information Systems (IIS) can be defined as the next generation of Information Systems (IS) developed as a result of integration of AI and database (DB) technologies. IIS embody knowledge that allows them to exhibit intelligent behavior, allows them to cooperate with users and other systems in problem solving, discovery, retrieval, and manipulation of data and knowledge. For any IIS to serve its purpose, the information must be available when it is needed. This means that the computing systems used to store data and process the information, and the security controls used to protect it must be functioning correctly. This book covers some of the above topics and it is divided into four sections: Classification, Approximation and Data Security, Knowledge Management, and Application of IIS to medical and music domains.

This book covers the latest in multi-objective swarm intelligence and cooperative behavior. It contains innovative and intriguing applications as well as additions to the methodology and theory of genetic programming.

New approaches are needed that could move us towards developing effective systems for problem solving and decision making, systems that can deal with complex and ill-structured situations, systems that can function in information rich environments, systems that can cope with imprecise information, systems that can rely on their knowledge and learn from experience - i.e. intelligent systems. One of the main efforts in intelligent systems development is focused on knowledge and information management which is regarded as the crucial issue in smart decision making support. The 13 Chapters of this book represent a sample of such effort. The overall aim of this book is to provide guidelines to develop tools for smart processing of knowledge and information. Still, the guide does not presume to give ultimate answers. Rather, it poses ideas and case studies to explore and the complexities and challenges of modern knowledge management issues. It also encourages its reader to become aware of the multifaceted interdisciplinary character of such issues. The premise of this book is that its reader will leave it with a heightened ability to think - in different ways - about developing, evaluating, and supporting intelligent knowledge and information management systems in real life based environment.

The College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) at UNC-Charlotte has three departments: Computer Science, Software and Information Systems, and Bioinformatics and Genomics. The Department of Computer Science offers study in a variety of specialized computing areas such as database design, knowledge systems, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, computer networks, game design, visualization, computer vision, and virtual reality. The Department of Software and Information Systems is primarily focused on the study of technologies and methodologies for information system architecture, design, implementation, integration, and management with particular emphasis on system security. The Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics focuses on the discovery, development and application of novel computational technologies to help solve important biological problems. This volume gives an overview of research done by CCI faculty in the area of Information & Intelligent Systems. Presented papers focus on recent advances in four major directions: Complex Systems, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Discovery, and Visualization. A major reason for producing this book was to demonstrate a new, important thrust in academic research where college-wide interdisciplinary efforts are brought to bear on large, general, and important problems. As shown in the research described here, these efforts need not be formally organized joint undertakings (through parts could be) but are rather a convergence of interests around grand themes.