Taking a Master of Distance Education degree as the backdrop for this chapter, we intend to demon... more Taking a Master of Distance Education degree as the backdrop for this chapter, we intend to demonstrate that the ePortfolio can be an important milestone and tool in lifelong learning and the continuing professional education of adult learners. The ePortfolio lays the foundation for an ongoing process of multifaceted uses and is, as Lakin (2005) states, the “catalyst for lifelong learning ownership”(para. 1). The
We start this chapter with a living example of social software “in the works.” Two authors using ... more We start this chapter with a living example of social software “in the works.” Two authors using social software tools created this chapter collaboratively. In our initial step in writing this chapter, we created a wiki (See section titled “Essential Web Learning Tools: Wikis” for a full description). The wiki is organized in sections accessible by links in such a way that we can edit it at anytime and anywhere a computer with a Web browser and Internet connection are available.
The main goal of this paper is to re-visit and critically analyze the current use of e-Portfolios... more The main goal of this paper is to re-visit and critically analyze the current use of e-Portfolios within the Master of Distance Education program, and further provide an enhanced framework for a more effective and efficient e-Portfolio implementation within the program, based on main findings from the literature in the area of e-Portfolio applied to the institutional academic programs, with particular interest in the graduate level programs.
The International Review of Research in Open and …, Jan 1, 2008
Distance education in Brazil has evolved more slowly than distance education offerings in other d... more Distance education in Brazil has evolved more slowly than distance education offerings in other developing countries. This is because all aspects of Brazil's publicly-funded educational system are excessively regulated, highly bureaucratic, and tightly centralized. Such highly centralized bureaucracy and strict control has resulted in tremendous hurdles that work to thwart the adoption, provision, and diffusion of distance education. This is not good news: Like many developing countries, Brazil is also characterized by wide gaps in wealth distribution, with 20 percent of its population functionally illiterate and living below the poverty line. Distance education, therefore, could be used to help train Brazil's citizens. Brazil's emerging status in the global economy, however, is generating enormous opportunities that are fueling demand for change. For example, in their quest to be competitive in the emerging global economy, Brazil's corporate sector has addressed this challenge by establishing corporate universities to train and educate their employees; much of this corporate training and education takes place online and at a distance. The established and emerging educational opportunities provided by Brazil's corporate sector, in turn, is fuelling the demand for the provision of distance education throughout Brazil. Indeed, most Brazilians are ready for distance education. Many Brazilian households own television sets and cellular telephones, and its expanding communication infrastructure has capacity to support distance and continuing education models. Moreover, this capacity is currently being used by Brazil's rapidly expanding corporate university sector. In spite of Brazil's emergence in the global marketplace and its private-sector educational success stories, Brazil's public educational institutions have not kept pace. This is due to Brazil's long-standing stringent regulation of its public education sector. Recent public initiatives, however, such as the Open University of Brazil, do hold promise in fueling the growth of distance education to meet the needs of its citizens, poor and rich alike. This paper analyzes the evolution of distance education in Brazil. It explores interrelationship between the nation's corporate and publicly-funded highereducation sectors, and the influences Brazil's highly regulated distance education practices has on the corporate environment. The paper concludes with a broad-brushed overview of 'success stories' of Brazil's corporate universities.
process is syllabus-centric. Materials to accompany collections of texts are usually developed by... more process is syllabus-centric. Materials to accompany collections of texts are usually developed by one individual following a classic "craftsman" process. This tradition has helped ensure attention is paid to both the appropriate theoretical foundation and to changes and advances occurring in the professional world. This model has not been able to keep up with growing demands, especially because of the online delivery mode used since 1994, which has boosted enrollments dramatically. More instructors and more sophisticated materials must be readily available for each course. At the same time, with the fast
Abstract.–We give a new formulation for the problem of task scheduling into unrelated processors ... more Abstract.–We give a new formulation for the problem of task scheduling into unrelated processors under precedence constraints. This formulation has a polynomial number of variables and does not require that the processing times be integer valued. Keywords: Parallel processing, scheduling, unrelated processors, precedence constraints, makespan.
Abstract This work presents a parallel implementation of the microcanonical optimization metaheur... more Abstract This work presents a parallel implementation of the microcanonical optimization metaheuristic (O) for the task scheduling problem on heterogeneous processors under precedence constraints. The O algorithm consists of two iterative procedures {the initialization and the sampling phases, which are alternately applied. We discuss di erent trends in parallelizing the O metaheuristic based on a systematic approach.
ABSTRACT TOOL is an object-oriented, event-driven programming system, designed to simplify the ta... more ABSTRACT TOOL is an object-oriented, event-driven programming system, designed to simplify the task of building application programs for Windows and similar environments. Its class construct has been designed to allow the definition of behaviors of different natures for the modelled objects. In this report we propose the inclusion of iterators in TOOL, as coroutine-like operators, which provide the programmer with the ability of using control loop objects of any class.
Abstract This paper presents parallelization strategies of a tabu search algorithm for the task s... more Abstract This paper presents parallelization strategies of a tabu search algorithm for the task scheduling problem on heterogeneous processors under task precedence constraints. Parallelization relies exclusively on the decomposition of the solution space exploration.
Abstract Cost-effective multiprocessor designs may be obtained by combining in the same architect... more Abstract Cost-effective multiprocessor designs may be obtained by combining in the same architecture processors of different speeds (heterogeneous architecture) so that the serial and critical portions of the application may benefit from a fast single processor.
Abstract Most parallel jobs cannot be fully parallelized. In a homogeneous parallel machine| one ... more Abstract Most parallel jobs cannot be fully parallelized. In a homogeneous parallel machine| one in which all processors are identical| the serial fraction of the computation has to be executed at the speed of any of the identical processors, limiting the speedup that can be obtained due to parallelism. In a heterogeneous architecture, the sequential bottleneck can be greatly reduced by running the sequential part of the job or even the critical tasks in a faster processor.
Abstract Parallel processing has emerged as a key enabling technology in modern computers, driven... more Abstract Parallel processing has emerged as a key enabling technology in modern computers, driven by the ever-increasing demand for higher performance, lower costs and sustained productivity in real-life applications. At the same time, the Internet, whose exponential growth in the last 4 years can be greatly attributed to the ever-increasing popularity of the World-Wide Web, has become a virtual in nite source of information and processing resources.
Abstract {Parallel applications with regular and well-known behavior, where task execution time e... more Abstract {Parallel applications with regular and well-known behavior, where task execution time estimates are fairly reliable, are suited to static task scheduling (in opposition to dynamic scheduling, performed during the execution of the application). This is the case of a great majority of scienti c applications. Modeling parallel machines as heterogeneous systems means taking into consideration more realistic issues in computer design.
We consider distributed-memory parallel machines that support the FIFO delivery of messages among... more We consider distributed-memory parallel machines that support the FIFO delivery of messages among processors, and present an asynchronous distributed algorithm that ensures the FIFO delivery of messages among tasks that migrate in such machines. For the concurrent migration of a set K of tasks, the algorithm requires O(nm,) interprocessor messages and O(n) time to run, where n is the number of processors in the system and mK is the number of pairs of communicating tasks involving the migrating tasks. However, for a great number of current distributed-memory architectures, these complexities can be reduced to O(m,l and O(l), respectively. * Corresponding author.
Using synthetic workloads for parallel task scheduling improvement analysis
Vector and Parallel ProcessingVECPAR'98, Jan 1, 1999
This paper presents an experimental validation of makespan improvements of two scheduling algorit... more This paper presents an experimental validation of makespan improvements of two scheduling algorithms: a greedy construction algorithm and a tabu search based algorithm. Synthetic parallel executions were performed using the scheduled graph costs. These synthetic executions were performed on a real parallel machine (IBM SP). The estimated and observed response times improvements are very similar, representing the low impact of system overhead on makespan improvement estimation. This guarantees a reliable cost ...
Taking a Master of Distance Education degree as the backdrop for this chapter, we intend to demon... more Taking a Master of Distance Education degree as the backdrop for this chapter, we intend to demonstrate that the ePortfolio can be an important milestone and tool in lifelong learning and the continuing professional education of adult learners. The ePortfolio lays the foundation for an ongoing process of multifaceted uses and is, as Lakin (2005) states, the “catalyst for lifelong learning ownership”(para. 1). The
We start this chapter with a living example of social software “in the works.” Two authors using ... more We start this chapter with a living example of social software “in the works.” Two authors using social software tools created this chapter collaboratively. In our initial step in writing this chapter, we created a wiki (See section titled “Essential Web Learning Tools: Wikis” for a full description). The wiki is organized in sections accessible by links in such a way that we can edit it at anytime and anywhere a computer with a Web browser and Internet connection are available.
The main goal of this paper is to re-visit and critically analyze the current use of e-Portfolios... more The main goal of this paper is to re-visit and critically analyze the current use of e-Portfolios within the Master of Distance Education program, and further provide an enhanced framework for a more effective and efficient e-Portfolio implementation within the program, based on main findings from the literature in the area of e-Portfolio applied to the institutional academic programs, with particular interest in the graduate level programs.
The International Review of Research in Open and …, Jan 1, 2008
Distance education in Brazil has evolved more slowly than distance education offerings in other d... more Distance education in Brazil has evolved more slowly than distance education offerings in other developing countries. This is because all aspects of Brazil's publicly-funded educational system are excessively regulated, highly bureaucratic, and tightly centralized. Such highly centralized bureaucracy and strict control has resulted in tremendous hurdles that work to thwart the adoption, provision, and diffusion of distance education. This is not good news: Like many developing countries, Brazil is also characterized by wide gaps in wealth distribution, with 20 percent of its population functionally illiterate and living below the poverty line. Distance education, therefore, could be used to help train Brazil's citizens. Brazil's emerging status in the global economy, however, is generating enormous opportunities that are fueling demand for change. For example, in their quest to be competitive in the emerging global economy, Brazil's corporate sector has addressed this challenge by establishing corporate universities to train and educate their employees; much of this corporate training and education takes place online and at a distance. The established and emerging educational opportunities provided by Brazil's corporate sector, in turn, is fuelling the demand for the provision of distance education throughout Brazil. Indeed, most Brazilians are ready for distance education. Many Brazilian households own television sets and cellular telephones, and its expanding communication infrastructure has capacity to support distance and continuing education models. Moreover, this capacity is currently being used by Brazil's rapidly expanding corporate university sector. In spite of Brazil's emergence in the global marketplace and its private-sector educational success stories, Brazil's public educational institutions have not kept pace. This is due to Brazil's long-standing stringent regulation of its public education sector. Recent public initiatives, however, such as the Open University of Brazil, do hold promise in fueling the growth of distance education to meet the needs of its citizens, poor and rich alike. This paper analyzes the evolution of distance education in Brazil. It explores interrelationship between the nation's corporate and publicly-funded highereducation sectors, and the influences Brazil's highly regulated distance education practices has on the corporate environment. The paper concludes with a broad-brushed overview of 'success stories' of Brazil's corporate universities.
process is syllabus-centric. Materials to accompany collections of texts are usually developed by... more process is syllabus-centric. Materials to accompany collections of texts are usually developed by one individual following a classic "craftsman" process. This tradition has helped ensure attention is paid to both the appropriate theoretical foundation and to changes and advances occurring in the professional world. This model has not been able to keep up with growing demands, especially because of the online delivery mode used since 1994, which has boosted enrollments dramatically. More instructors and more sophisticated materials must be readily available for each course. At the same time, with the fast
Abstract.–We give a new formulation for the problem of task scheduling into unrelated processors ... more Abstract.–We give a new formulation for the problem of task scheduling into unrelated processors under precedence constraints. This formulation has a polynomial number of variables and does not require that the processing times be integer valued. Keywords: Parallel processing, scheduling, unrelated processors, precedence constraints, makespan.
Abstract This work presents a parallel implementation of the microcanonical optimization metaheur... more Abstract This work presents a parallel implementation of the microcanonical optimization metaheuristic (O) for the task scheduling problem on heterogeneous processors under precedence constraints. The O algorithm consists of two iterative procedures {the initialization and the sampling phases, which are alternately applied. We discuss di erent trends in parallelizing the O metaheuristic based on a systematic approach.
ABSTRACT TOOL is an object-oriented, event-driven programming system, designed to simplify the ta... more ABSTRACT TOOL is an object-oriented, event-driven programming system, designed to simplify the task of building application programs for Windows and similar environments. Its class construct has been designed to allow the definition of behaviors of different natures for the modelled objects. In this report we propose the inclusion of iterators in TOOL, as coroutine-like operators, which provide the programmer with the ability of using control loop objects of any class.
Abstract This paper presents parallelization strategies of a tabu search algorithm for the task s... more Abstract This paper presents parallelization strategies of a tabu search algorithm for the task scheduling problem on heterogeneous processors under task precedence constraints. Parallelization relies exclusively on the decomposition of the solution space exploration.
Abstract Cost-effective multiprocessor designs may be obtained by combining in the same architect... more Abstract Cost-effective multiprocessor designs may be obtained by combining in the same architecture processors of different speeds (heterogeneous architecture) so that the serial and critical portions of the application may benefit from a fast single processor.
Abstract Most parallel jobs cannot be fully parallelized. In a homogeneous parallel machine| one ... more Abstract Most parallel jobs cannot be fully parallelized. In a homogeneous parallel machine| one in which all processors are identical| the serial fraction of the computation has to be executed at the speed of any of the identical processors, limiting the speedup that can be obtained due to parallelism. In a heterogeneous architecture, the sequential bottleneck can be greatly reduced by running the sequential part of the job or even the critical tasks in a faster processor.
Abstract Parallel processing has emerged as a key enabling technology in modern computers, driven... more Abstract Parallel processing has emerged as a key enabling technology in modern computers, driven by the ever-increasing demand for higher performance, lower costs and sustained productivity in real-life applications. At the same time, the Internet, whose exponential growth in the last 4 years can be greatly attributed to the ever-increasing popularity of the World-Wide Web, has become a virtual in nite source of information and processing resources.
Abstract {Parallel applications with regular and well-known behavior, where task execution time e... more Abstract {Parallel applications with regular and well-known behavior, where task execution time estimates are fairly reliable, are suited to static task scheduling (in opposition to dynamic scheduling, performed during the execution of the application). This is the case of a great majority of scienti c applications. Modeling parallel machines as heterogeneous systems means taking into consideration more realistic issues in computer design.
We consider distributed-memory parallel machines that support the FIFO delivery of messages among... more We consider distributed-memory parallel machines that support the FIFO delivery of messages among processors, and present an asynchronous distributed algorithm that ensures the FIFO delivery of messages among tasks that migrate in such machines. For the concurrent migration of a set K of tasks, the algorithm requires O(nm,) interprocessor messages and O(n) time to run, where n is the number of processors in the system and mK is the number of pairs of communicating tasks involving the migrating tasks. However, for a great number of current distributed-memory architectures, these complexities can be reduced to O(m,l and O(l), respectively. * Corresponding author.
Using synthetic workloads for parallel task scheduling improvement analysis
Vector and Parallel ProcessingVECPAR'98, Jan 1, 1999
This paper presents an experimental validation of makespan improvements of two scheduling algorit... more This paper presents an experimental validation of makespan improvements of two scheduling algorithms: a greedy construction algorithm and a tabu search based algorithm. Synthetic parallel executions were performed using the scheduled graph costs. These synthetic executions were performed on a real parallel machine (IBM SP). The estimated and observed response times improvements are very similar, representing the low impact of system overhead on makespan improvement estimation. This guarantees a reliable cost ...
Uploads
Papers by Stella Porto