Athens Information Technology Center
Contact person: Sofia Tsekeridou
sots [at] ait.gr
is an Assistant Professor at Athens Information Technology, heading the Multimedia, Knowledge and Web Technologies research group of the IRIS Lab. She has participated and coordinated numerous national, industrial and EU-funded research projects in the areas of multimedia processing, e-learning, data mining, search engines, recommender systems and knowledge engineering. Research results in the broad area of technology-enhanced learning have led, among others, to two prototypes: Kwebo, a Web 2.0 e-learning system, and AllurEdu, an Educational Resources Search Engine and Recommender System. She has published several papers at international scientific journals and conferences and has contributed to the TV Anytime and W3C standardization bodies. She has served as a reviewer to many international scientific conferences and journals. She is a senior member of IEEE and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece.
Description of the smart city learning group operating in the affiliated institution
AIT is an internationally-renowned non-profit technology institute that combines its talented faculty, industry links and partnerships to foster world-class education and advanced research in innovative technologies with emphasis on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and innovation management. AIT offers postgraduate education including two Master’s programs and a PhD program in collaboration with Aalborg University. Executive training programs on a variety of technological and business themes already count more than 3500 alumni. Despite its young age, AIT has already a proven prowess in research excellence, as evidenced by its large research output, its faculty’s numerous distinctions, and the large number of research grants it has received. Indicatively, in the last five years, AIT has participated as a private, non-profit research organization in 50 collaborative EU-funded research projects, including several FP7 and HORIZON2020 projects, often in a leading technical role. AIT also provides a very internationally-oriented work environment, with most of its faculty having spent significant parts of their careers abroad, English as its official language and almost half of its students of foreign nationalities from over 30 different countries. AIT has established a powerful network of almost 300 research partners and is particularly prone to international visits, exchanges and collaborations.
The Multimedia, Knowledge and Web Technologies research group of AIT, following the emerging paradigm of cross-disciplinary research in the Media and Web worlds, masters education, research and development activities that build upon and innovate through the synergy of Web (Semantic Web/Web 2.0/Web 3.0) Technologies and Knowledge Engineering Practices with Multimedia Technologies, aiming at devising next generation intelligent, self-aware/self-adaptable rich media interactive Web applications and services deployed and validated in a number of application areas, such as:
• e-learning, edutainment, serious/educational games
• Entertainment through gaming (multi-player, online, mobile)
• DTV/iTV and Digital Cinema, VoD, Web TV, IPTV, Video on the Web
• Multimedia Archives and Digital libraries, Rich Media Web portals, Multimedia Information Systems and Search Engines, Recommender Systems
• Social networking, Social Media (Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, Facebook, etc.), Web 2.0/3.0
• Virtual/Mixed reality worlds in digital entertainment, art, culture, education, collaboration spaces, etc.
• E-commerce, e-business, e-government, e-publishing, etc.
• Security and public safety in smart cities supported by cloud computing infrastructures
The vision of this Group is to build a solid research base in the areas of multimedia, knowledge and web technologies so as to elicit from innovation new applications and services, and, by exploiting synergies, prove the synergetic concept in carefully selected application areas.
Relevant to the SCLO Group Activities
A significant part of the research activities of the group focus in the area of efficient use of ICT in education, technology-enabled learning, e-learning, edutainment and serious games in diverse educational contexts (formal, informal, non-formal, within educational organizations, communities of practice, virtual learning spaces, social network applications, etc.). These activities further include research in a diverse number of fields such as big data analytics, heterogeneous content aggregation, analysis, fusion and knowledge extraction from various sources (LMSs, cloud computing infrastructures, social media, the Web, etc.), gaming, learner profiling, personalization, etc.
Competences
The competences of the group mainly lie in designing and developing novel algorithms, tools and technologies to support learning in diverse contexts and application domains, ranging from big data analytics, search and recommendation, dynamic profiling and personalization to adaptive learning systems and tools. The group further demonstrates experience in the design and development of e-courses, interactive educational multimedia, and educational games.
Relevant achievements, best practices, products
Research Prototypes have originated as a result of undertaken research in the context of prior R&D projects:
- AIT’s e-learning 2.0 system: Kwebo, based on and extending the open source LMS openolat.
- AIT’s Social Media Search Engine and Recommender System for Educational Resources: AllurEdu
On going challenges
R&D Projects
• “Digitization of the Historic Archive of the Holy Synod and Value added Service Provisioning”, NSRF 2007-2013, subcontractors of e-learning 2.0 system and services provisioning, design and development of e-courses and educational games (in progress), Start date: September 2014.
• iGuide: Socially Enriched Mobile Tourist Guide for Unexploited Cultural and Natural Monuments, NSRF 2007-2013, Cooperation Programme/GSRT (in progress), Start date: November 2013
Relevant publications
• I. Christou, T. Tiropanis, S. Tsekeridou
“Grid-based Interactive Virtual Scientific Experiments for Distributed Virtual Communities”
in “The Learning Grid Handbook”, Editors: Kaleidoscope NoE, Learning Grid Special Interest Group, IOS Press, pp. 191-210, 2008
ISBN 978-1-58603-829-8.
• A. Pierri, T. Tiropanis, I. Christou, S. Tsekeridou and B. Vassiliadis
“Application of a virtual scientific experiment model in different educational contexts”
e-challenges conference: Exploiting the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications and Case Studies, IOS Press, 2006.
• T. Tiropanis, S. Tsekeridou, T. Serif, L. Stergioulas, G. Ghinea
“Empowering geographically isolated communities with instant access to learning and training through satellite”
Proceedings of the EDEN (European Distance and E-Learning Network) 2007 Conference, Naples, Italy, 13-16 June 2007.
• I. T. Christou, T. Tiropanis, S. Tsekeridou, K. Roussos
“Grid-based Interactive Virtual Scientific Experiments for Distributed Virtual Communities”
Intl. Journal on Continuous Engineering Education & Life-long Learning, Interscience Publishers Ltd., 2009
• Hristijan Petreski, Sofia Tsekeridou, Eri Giannaka, Neeli Prasad, Zheng-Hua Tan, Ramjee Prasad
“Technology-enabled social learning : a review”
International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, Inderscience Publishers, vol. 7, no 3/4, pp. 253-270, 2011
• Hristijan Petreski, Sofia Tsekeridou, Neeli R. Prasad, Zhen-Hua Tan
“Multi-dimensional technology-enabled social learning approach”
7th Int. Conf. on Open and Distance Learning (ICODL 2013), Athens, Greece, 8-10 November 2013.
• Sofia Tsekeridou, V. Tsetsos, A. Chalamandaris, C. Chamzas, T. Filippou, and C. Pantzoglou
“iGuide: Socially-Enriched Mobile Tourist Guide for Unexplored Sites”
8th Hellenic Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (SETN 2014), Springer Lecture Notes on AI (LNAI) 8445, pp. 603–614, Ioannina, Greece, 15-17 May, 2014
• Hristijan Petreski, Sofia Tsekeridou, Neeli R. Prasad, Zhen-Hua Tan
“Methodology for Dynamic Learning Resources Discovery and Retrieval from Social Media”
6th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, Barcelona, Spain, 7-9 July 2014.