Andrea Molinari | University of Trento (original) (raw)

Papers by Andrea Molinari

Expert Systems with Applications, 2012

We investigate the group processes involved in effort estimation in the context of Project Manage... more We investigate the group processes involved in effort estimation in the context of Project Management. The groups considered are formed by "experts" (people with specific technical competence) and "non-experts" (people with less specific technical competence, usually experts in related fields), because the typically complementary bias of the two classes contribute to a more balanced estimate. In this paper we exploit further the synergies between experts and non-experts in an MCDM framework, aggregating the individual estimates by means of non-additive Choquet integration, and representing the complementary bias by the multiagent interaction structure underlying the capacity. We present some examples and computer simulations whose aggregation results outperform those of the classical weighted mean (additive case), showing lower MMRE (mean magnitude of the relative error between the central estimate and the actual value) and higher HitRate (at which the interval estimate contains the actual value).

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2014

International Conferences on Distributed Multimedia Systems

The paper addresses the issue of managing activities within virtual learning communities, a topic... more The paper addresses the issue of managing activities within virtual learning communities, a topic virtually ignored by LMS platforms and systems that offer collaboration services, not least social networks. The question is not surprising in itself, as the issue of managing time, costs and resources, linked to the discipline of Project Management, is historically a difficult issue for the IT world, from a cultural, technical and organizational point of view. The issue becomes even more complex if applied to the management of learning processes, where in any case we have times, deadlines, associated costs, resources that work there etc. In this work we will present a component for the management of projects, activities and resources within a collaborative platform used mainly in e-learning contexts, based on the metaphor of virtual learning communities. The introduction of this new component within the system wants to respond to the need to manage collaborative activities between learners, providing a tool for managing and controlling the progress of the activities assigned to the various members of the community

This paper presents the RAGE marketplace portal (gamecomponents.eu), which is intended as a hot s... more This paper presents the RAGE marketplace portal (gamecomponents.eu), which is intended as a hot spot and neutral single point of access for serious game technologies. The portal aims at fostering collaborations and the exchange of technical artefacts and associated knowledge and resources between different stakeholders in the field of serious gaming (e.g. educators, developers, researchers, publishers, policy makers and end-users). After a brief introduction to the H2020 RAGE project, the flexible design of the marketplace portal and its underlying software repository are presented. A concise overview is given of the initial set of advanced game technology components created by RAGE, that are currently exposed in the portal. For empirical validation of these components, we have developed 7 serious games based on subsets of these components, which were then tested in educational practice with several hundreds of end-users. This game components portal want to be a neutral hub not depe...

In this paper we present a long experimentation conducted by the Trento Chamber of Commerce in th... more In this paper we present a long experimentation conducted by the Trento Chamber of Commerce in the usage of elearning and SCORM-based material in order to introduce companies to innovative practices, specifically the use of the Digital Signature and the Certified Electronic email. These two tools have become now mandatory in the Italian Public Administration, thus forcing not only this component of the society to pursue innovation through dematerialization processes. It also, and mostly, involves millions of citizens and companies that, from now on, will have the opportunity to interact with public bodies in a more efficient and effective way, through the use of these innovation. Neither the Public Administration nor most of the companies (especially SMEs) were ready to this radical change of using electronic communication. Thus an enormous effort of training will be needed to allow everyone to be aligned with concepts, tools, modalities and procedures to be used in order to take ad...

This paper presents a prototype for the construction of interactive educational hypermedia that c... more This paper presents a prototype for the construction of interactive educational hypermedia that can be used on the Internet without being bound to typical World Wide Web protocols and tools. Its most innovative aspect is interactivity: it allows teachers and learners to remotely interact in real time in both a synchronous and asynchronous manner. Web-based educational material leaves the responsibility of navigation to the student. This prototype, instead, allows a teacher to manage the lesson in a way that guarantees coherence in the exposition of the arguments without using CGI (Common Gateway Interface), Java, HTML (HyperText Markup Language), or a Web browser. Furthermore, all the didactic material is produced by the teacher using a multimedia authoring system that allows much more sophisticated expressiveness, greater simplicity of use, and a more developed interactivity than that provided by Web-based technology. Topics discussed include Web-free didactic hypermedia materials ...

Journal of Visual Language and Computing

The paper analyses the addition of project management features of an LMS, a topic that LMSs and c... more The paper analyses the addition of project management features of an LMS, a topic that LMSs and collaboration platforms have entirely ignored. Many project management-like platforms are available today, especially riding the media wave of agile methodologies. The question is not surprising in itself, as managing time, costs, and resources linked to the discipline of Project Management, is historically a problematic issue for the IT world from a cultural, technical, and organizational point of view. The problem becomes even more complex if applied to the management of learning projects, where we have time, constraints, deadlines, costs, resources like in any other project. LMSs and, in general, collaboration platforms do not include these features, forcing users to link external platforms or adapt existing features (like simple to-do lists) to more complex Project Management tasks. In this work, we will present the tests conducted in a collaborative platform based on the metaphor of virtual learning communities. These tests were on a component developed explicitly for managing projects, activities, and resources, integrated inside the LMS with all the other services (blog, forum, file sharing, calendar, reminders, etc.). The introduction of this new component within the system addresses the need to manage collaborative activities between learners, providing a tool for managing and controlling the progress of the activities assigned to the various community members. .

Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems, Jul 8, 2019

The e-learning scenario is fast-changing in all of its main aspects from both the technology side... more The e-learning scenario is fast-changing in all of its main aspects from both the technology side and the users' perspective. In this vein, applications and services as well as methodologies are evolving rapidly running after the more recent innovations, through the adoption of novel infrastructures and distributed architectures, to provide the most advanced solutions. In this situation, we observe that the more influential technological factors are two. The former is the availability of a new wave of big data also inherent educational tasks, which can be considered a powerful source for all the people involved in the educational process and acts as enabler for the development of new models for both management and education, based on analytics. The latter is cognitive computing, which can provide learners and teachers with innovative services enhancing the whole learning process, also introducing new capabilities to improve human machine interactions. In these circumstances, it seems that Learning Management Systems (LMS) have reached their maturity stage and they may need a redesign. In this respect, the paper outlines the evolutionary trends of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and presents the results achieved within two experiences carried on in two Italian universities.

International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning (iJAC), 2016

Semantic technologies have been studied and used in different areas of computer science. E-learni... more Semantic technologies have been studied and used in different areas of computer science. E-learning has been one of this, but the most frequent use of semantic technologies in this discipline has been in the extraction and indexing of contents, like forums, blogs, learning objects etc. The research presented in this paper aims at taking advantage of semantic technologies in a different way respect to the mainstream use that has been done in the past. This new approach refers to the use of semantic technologies in the management of the persistence layer of Learning Management Systems (LMS), i.e., where all the contents are stored. Our research follows the idea of using semantics technologies as a support, if not an entire replacement, of the backend and persistence mechanisms of LMSs. As a testbed, we will present the design and early results of the application of this approach to the persistence layer of a Virtual Communities System, where these technologies will enriched the platfo...

INTED2016 Proceedings, 2016

Proceedings of the 24th International DMS Conference on Visualization and Visual Languages, Jul 1, 2018

Since the early years where they started to enter the market, Learning Management Systems (LMS) h... more Since the early years where they started to enter the market, Learning Management Systems (LMS) have reached a very high level of maturity, providing professional solutions to mostly any educational need referring to distance learning. In this paper, an analysis of how LMSs should evolve in the future is presented, according to authors' experience, in terms of functionalities and services provided to users. Behind these new functionalities and services, we foresee research fields that could provide interesting and fruitful stimulus to the market and to these platforms. The foreseen direction is the one that goes towards an expansion of the collaboration services, where virtual learning environments should be mixed with typical Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) tools and approaches that put collaboration at the heart of the system. Nevertheless, also traditional e-learning services should be improved with additions coming exactly from this integration with cooperative / collaborative services. The reference point is a virtual community platform created and developed along the years, used in the authors' institutions and in several public and private organizations. The platform is oriented towards the support of collaborative processes, where of course e-learning is one of the most important, but not the only one, and where new services supporting collaboration in different ways are constantly added.

Proceedings of ISIC: the information behaviour conference Pretoria, South Africa, 28th September to 1st October, 2020

Introduction. Information literacy and digital literacy skills have become increasingly important... more Introduction. Information literacy and digital literacy skills have become increasingly important capabilities in the digital world, as such it is of the utmost importance to assess how individual’s literacy skills impact people’s intention to use digital technology. Method. In this paper, based on the current literature, we design our research and through an empirical study conducted in Finland and Italy, we examine how these skills impact the decision of university students to use digital technology. Analysis. Data was analysed through a novel method (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis). Results. The fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis results show that students in these two countries differ from one another and factors influencing the intention to use digital technology vary among students. For Finnish students’ digital literacy and for Italian students’ information literacy were important factors. Conclusions. The results of this paper contribute to the informatio...

EDULEARN16 Proceedings, 2016

Journal of E Learning and Knowledge Society Italian Version, May 15, 2009

Journal of E Learning and Knowledge Society English Version, Nov 16, 2009