billboards are amazing capability for announcing the personal feelings while the general billboard can be helpful in informing the last news of an organization ...
2011 First IRAST International Conference on Data Engineering and Internet Technology (DEIT)
A Framework for e-Content Generation,Management and Integration in MYREN Network Vala Ali Rohani
Siew Hock Ow
Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Computer Science University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Computer Science University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Abstract— Malaysian Research and Education Network (MYREN) aims to provide accessible broadband to the Malaysian researchers to achieve the country’s knowledge economy aspiration. This networking super highway enables researchers to run data-intensive applications, share computing equipments and run advanced applications within Malaysia as well as overseas. In this paper we provide a social network based framework for enabling all universities and higher education colleges in Malaysia to generate their academic content using MYREN infrastructure and also share them with each other and even with the several other international research communities in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. Keywords: Social Network, e-Content, Integration, MYREN
I.
INTRODUCTION
A huge number of Internet users have visited thousands of social networking sites. They have taken advantage of the free services of such sites in order to stay connected online with their offline friends and new online acquaintances, or to share user-created contents, such as photos, videos, bookmarks, blogs, etc. Most of these social networks are developed for public purposes which allow a wide range of internet users in different ages, interests, social and academic levels to join them and make their own friendship network [8,9]. Universities, Colleges and higher education institutions are constantly being refreshed with new members while being connected with graduates seems to be vital too. In most cases, Students use the systems only out of necessity rather than choice, preferring to self create study groups on Facebook [2]. But is obvious that the academic society and definitely their members, need some special facilities to leverage the regarding communication between students, graduates, instructors and all other members of academic environments [1]. As a government-funded Project, MYREN provides an accessible broadband infrastructure for connecting all universities in Malaysia. Now, it is necessary to have a social
978-1-4244-8581-9/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
network-based solution to help all universities to generate their academic content autonomously and also making them enable to share some common web based facilities with each other for achieving an integrated academic environments which includes all universities and higher education colleges in Malaysia. II.
MYREN NETWORK
MYREN provides high-capacity broadband to universities, colleges, research organizations and scientific laboratories. A government-funded project, MYREN aims to provide accessible broadband to the Malaysian researchers to achieve the country’s k-economy aspiration. This networking super highway enables researchers to run dataintensive applications, share computing equipments and run advanced applications within Malaysia as well as overseas. MYREN was launched by the Minister of Energy, Water & Communications, Minister of Science, Innovation & Technology and Deputy Minister of Higher Education on the 28th March 2005. It has been operational since then and currently being spearheaded by the Ministry of Information, Communication & Culture (MICC). MYREN links seventeen (17) academic research institutions throughout Malaysia. It is also linked to several other National Research & Education Network (REN) overseas, including Asia Pacific, Europe & the United States [5]. A. MYREN Domestic Network MYREN currently connects fourteen universities and research institutions throughout Malaysia, via a nationwide IP backbone at 45Mbps capacity “Fig. 1”. The backbone covers eight states in the West and East of Malaysia. With more bandwidth intensive applications and greater user demand, it is envisaged that MYREN will evolve from the current 45Mbps backbone to a larger scale network in the following phase. MYREN backbone is versatile to support all types of traffic. Our researchers are running and operating various applications such as video conferencing, digital video transport system (DVTS), data computing, and
679
visualization/image modeling and e-learning. Therefore, it is important for MYREN to continue to deliver the quality performance required by the research communities.
Figure 1. MYREN Domestic Network.
Members are connected to MYREN via their respective access link, which can either be a fiber link or microwave link. The access connection varies according to the user’s requirements. MYREN connectivity is centralized at MYREN Network Operation Centre located in Cyberjaya [6]. B. MYREN International Linkage MYREN is connected to several international research communities in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America, via the Trans-Eurasia Information Network 3 (TEIN3) and Internet2. The connectivity coverage includes China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, Europe and the United States “Fig. 2”. Researchers connected to MYREN are able to communicate and collaborate with their counterparts overseas over the virtual work space at improved network performance and lower network latency [7]. III.
SOCIAL NETWORK-BASED FRAMEWORK
The institutions of higher learning in Malaysia play an important role in broadening the knowledge horizons in Malaysia. This research aims to design an infrastructure which can be a platform for each Malaysian university to create its own social network. Also, the supervision features can be included to gather valuable information for the use of the Malaysian institutions of higher learning. In this section, we will provide taxonomy of essential features of academic social web sites as a framework for generating, managing and integrating e-content by all universities and higher education colleges in Malaysia that are the members of MYREN network [3]. These features are separated in 4 categories: a) Administrative Features b) Collaborative Features c) Reporting Features d) Integrating Features
Figure 2. MYREN International Network.
As mentioned in TABLE I, the administrative features of academic social networks are categorized to 6 groups. The first 6 capabilities are common between all types of users are considered as General. The assignment uploading is considered for students who use this model and join this academic social network. Lecturers also need some special feature for handling their tasks in this model. Four features are considered for lecturers. There are other types of users which we can them as Researchers. They are not necessarily the lecturers. So we consider Research Field Following Management and My Publications Management for this kind of users. There are two level of administration in this model which will be handled by university and social network administrators. The last two groups of features are dedicated to this type of users. For persuading the social network users to check their profiles continuously, we should pay special attention to the collaborative features. TABLE II shows the list of suggested collaborative features in academic social networks. Personal billboards are amazing capability for announcing the personal feelings while the general billboard can be helpful in informing the last news of an organization (e.g. a university). All of the social network users need peer-to- peer message passing system and friendship network to be connected to their friends. Discussion forums and online groups can play a significant role in mechanizing the organizations in academic environments. We cannot forget the online chat as one of the most favorite features of social networks.
680
ADMINISTRATIVE FEATURES OF ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORKS A)
Administrative Features 1. Assignment Uploading
C) 1.Uploading assignments 2.Building Courses
3.Uploading Publications
3.Managing Course Student Forums 4.Course Membership Management
2.Daily Scientific News Letter Sending 3.Different Transaction Notifications
Sending daily scientific news to members email is one of the most effective alternatives for encouraging users to login to their profile periodically. The most important feature group of this model is Integrating Features (TABLE IV).
6.Freinds Network Management
TABLE IV. INTEGRATING FEATURES OF ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORKS A)
8. Forum activities
2.Managing Faculties Information 3.Abuse Report Management 4.News Letter Management
2.Abuse Report Management
General
1.Confirming a University
TABLE II. COLLABORATIVE FEATURES OF ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORKS B)
Collaborative Features
1. Personal and General Billboard
5.Discussion Forums
2.Peer-to-Peer Message passing
6.Online Groups
3.General Announcement
7.Online Chat
4.Friendship Network
Reporting services in social network can update the user information about his/her current position among the other users. TABLE III shows the list of necessary reporting features for our model in academic social networks. Pointing and ranking mechanism can create an enthusiasm for users to increase their rank and enhance their position in the social network of their university or colleges. We can consider different parameters for using in pointing mechanisms. Usually the number of invites, the count of scientific posts and also rate of user activities in answering to other members’ questions are considered as basic parameters for this purpose.
2.Single Signup Mechanism 3.Common Calendar
1.Common Research Following UP
For Researchers
1.Editing University Information
For Social Network Admin
For University Administrators
For Researchers
2.My Publications management
1.Common Billboard
2.Common Paper Reviewing Service
Integrating Features 1.Group Building 2.Common Assignments
For Lecturers
7.Membership
1.Research Field Following management
Reporting Features
1.Points & Ranks Management and Reporting
For Students
5.File Repository Management
For Lecturers
2.Editing Privacy Settings
For Students
General
1.Create and Editing profile
4.Billboard management
TABLE III. REPORTING FEATURES OF ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORKS
For University Administrator
TABLE I.
1.Common Course Management 2.Common Q&A Service 3.Common Paper Reviewing Service
1.Common News Letter 2.Common Discussion Forum Topics 3.Common Survey
According to survey in academic environment, we face to the need of integration between academic organizations social networks. Hence, we categorize these types of features in five groups according to its user domains. Some features like Common Billboard and Calendar are common among all social network members. Also, this model should prepare a special service to enable the its users to have several profiles regarding different social networks while having just a single Username and password. We named this service the Single Signup Mechanism. Regarding the students view point, this model provides some features for building scientific groups and also some services for doing teamwork in group assignments. This kind of features helps lecturers managing the shared course contents as well as handling the common Question and Answers services. Usually, the lecturers and researchers needs to cooperate with each others in some scholarly tasks such as paper reviewing. They can use the prepared service
681
in this manner to interact with each other as well as possible [4]. Maybe it would be too amazing for autonomous universities to share some services of their separated social networks with each other. In these cases, the integrating features which considered for University Administrators level can enable them to have inter-organization newsletters and discussion forums. IV.
MALAYSIAN EXPERTS ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORK
As the first working prototype, the Malaysian Experts academic social network has been created by the author to gather some experimental data from 10 universities in Malaysia. In this first try, more than 200 members has joint this web site to create their own profile which most of them are postgraduate students. In this working version, some basic facilities like profile, personal bill board, offline message passing, academic news broadcasting , university-based search services and ranking mechanism has been created to motivate the university students and graduates to join this academic social network [10].
Figure 3. Malaysian Experts university-based search facility
V.
CONCLUSION
This paper presented a social network-based framework for enabling the universities and higher education colleges in Malaysia to generate, manage and integrate academic e-
contents. This solution is applicable on MYREN network as a broadband infrastructure which will connect all universities in Malaysia to each other. In this framework, we categorized the most important and necessary features of a model for developing academic social networks in four categories includes Administrative, Collaborative, Reporting and Integrating features. This set of requirements can be used to design the architecture for autonomous and integrated social networks to enhance the interaction and teamwork between the students, graduates, lecturers, official staffs and researchers. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to acknowledge the collaborative funding support from the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS). Under grant no. FRGS/1/10/TK/UM/02/14.
REFERENCES [1]
Laura James, “JISC Academic Social Networking Final Report”, 22 April 2010 [2] Ian Boston, “Racing towards academic social networks”, ON THE HORIZON, VOL. 17 NO. 3 2009, pp. 218-225, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1074-8121. [3] Vala Ali Rohani, Siew Hock Ow, “Eliciting Essential Requirements for Social Networks in Academic Environments,”Proc. 2011 IEEE Symposium on Computers & Informatics, Accepted for publication. [4] Vala Ali Rohani, Siew Hock Ow, “A Social Network Based Solution for Integrating the Universities in Malaysia,”Proc. 4th International Conference in Postgarduate Education, ICPE4 2010, Accepted for publication. [5] http://www.myren.net.my/about/what-myren, Accessed 18 Oct. 2010. [6] http://www.myren.net.my/network/domestic-network, Accessed 23 Oct. 2010. [7] http://www.myren.net.my/network/international-linkages, Accessed 23 Oct. 2010. [8] Won Kim, Ok-Ran Jeong, Sang-Won Lee: On social Web sites. Information Systems 35, 215–236 (2010). [9] Prantik Bhattacharyya, Ankush Garg, S. Felix Wu: Social Network Model based on Keyword categorization. In ASONAM’09: Proc. Of International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining, IEEE Computer Society 2009. [10] http://www.MalaysianExperts.com.my, Accessed 28 Oct. 2010, Last upadted 20 Oct 2010.
682
