Mendeley & Citation Style Language

As I continued to write my Ph.D. thesis I found it very hard to organize and find literature that was on my hard drive I needed at that moment. The problem has always existed but now it has escalated because I currently have more than 150 different papers that needed to be organized, categorized and searchable. After digging around […]

Model of the new LMS generation with user-created content

The Learning Management System (LMS) of the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences has been in operation since 2004 when it was developed for the studying purposes according to the German Fachhochschule study concept and according to the then specific characteristics of studying in the Republic of Croatia. The system consists of five own developed modules (DMS, SAN, e-Student, SMSCentar and FPZmobile) which in synergy form the Faculty LMS. The Document Management System (DMS) is a system of managing documents and processes used for authorized access of the Faculty staff members to the modules that control the work of computer laboratories, e-Learning system administration (publishing of teaching materials, control and assessment of seminar papers, etc.), as well as the module for managing documents and processes within the Faculty (orders for equipment, reports on malfunctions, updated on-line directory, etc.). The authorization and supervision system (SAN) is a set of technologies and applications that allow supervision of students’ work on computers in computer classrooms of the Faculty, and personalization of the working environment in the Windows operating system, regardless of the particular computer the student is using. The e-Student system allows students authorized access to the teaching materials, tasks, exercises and instructions. Apart from this the system provides support in applying and producing seminar papers and various forms of knowledge testing (e-Blic, e-Test, e-Kviz). The SMSCentar and SAN system with smsCRM application (Customer Relationship Management via SMS) open up the possibilities for a number of information services for students and Faculty staff members based on interactive communication by means of SMS messages. Some three years ago, the m-Learning module was added to the e-Learning system of the Faculty in the form of interactive application for real-time information of students via mobile terminal devices, called FPZmobile. The basic idea was to develop an application that will provide accurate and up-to-date information related to the Faculty and the students’ achievements (seminars, exercises, quizzes, etc.) during their studying, in a form suitable for browsing on the mobile terminal devices interface, such as mobile phones, PDA devices or Smartphones. The modularity of such a system allows fast implementation of the new services according to the ideas and suggestions expressed both by the teaching and the non-teaching staff, and the students.

Possible Collision Avoidance With Off-Line Route Selection

The paper describes the traffic flow problems in telecommunication networks based on the Internet protocol. The main aim of telecommunication network operator today is to offer an SLA (Service Level Agreement) contract to end users, with provided QoS for different classes of services. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to establish the routes between marginal network nodes meeting the network traffic requirements and optimizing the network performances free of simultaneous flows conflicts. In DiffServ/MPLS networks traffic flows traverse the network simultaneously and there may come to collision of concurrent flows. They are distributed among LSPs (Labeled Switching Paths) related to service classes. In LSP creation the IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol) uses simple on-line routing algorithms based on the shortest path methodology. In highly loaded networks this becomes an insufficient technique. In this suggested approach LSP need not necessarily be the shortest path solution. It can be pre-computed much earlier, possibly during the SLA negotiation process. In that sense an effective algorithm for collision control is developed. It may find a longer but lightly loaded path, taking care of the collision possibility. It could be a very good solution for collision avoidance and for better load-balancing purpose where links are running close to capacity. The algorithm can be significantly improved through heuristic approach. Heuristic options are compared in test-examples and their application for collision control is explained.

Analysis of Operation and Possibilities of Improving e-Learning System

Since the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences was connected to CARNet academic network, new information and communication technologies are constantly being introduced and the old ones updated with the aim of improving the quality of studying, from the introduction of WEBCT application to complete design, development and implementation of one’s own solution of e-learning. A complete e-Learning system has been developed, named e-Student which consists of several program modules called SAN, DMS, SMSCentar, etc. Since the introduction of the system, the students and the teaching staff have shown great interest for the system for the reasons of easier monitoring of the students’ activities, through seminar papers and tasks, exercises and throug h solving of various knowledge tests. The work provides graphical illustrations and statistical data which analyze the operation of the system and the exploitation characteristics. The obtained results indicate the increase in the interest of the teaching staff and students which indicates further need to upgrade the system in order to increase the safety and speed of information transfer.