e-Textbooks: Types, Characteristics and Open Issues
HeeJeong J. Lee, Chris Messom, and Kok-Lim A. Yau
Abstract—The advantages brought about by electronic textbooks (e-Textbooks) in education have prompted a significant
amount of research and products related to e-Textbooks. Generally speaking, an e-Textbook is an electronic and interactive
form of textbook, and it has been shown to enhance users’ learning experience. Of particular interest in this article are textbooks
for K-12 education, which covers both the primary and secondary school curriculum. The e-Textbook products are blooming,
and it is foreseen that it will have significance impact on teaching and learning in the future, although its usage in the classroom
has been very limited to date. This article provides synopses of various types of e-Textbooks, which can be categorized based
on the underlying enabling technology, including web-based, reading software and dedicated devices. Additionally, this article
also examines what have been developed and available off the shelf, and finally draws some conclusions. The analysis will help
the research community to focus on the key technologies to make e-Textbooks a preferred choice of tool for teaching and
learning. This article serves as a foundation for further investigations in developing and distributing e-Textbooks in K-12
education.
Index Terms—e-Textbook, electronic textbook, digital textbook, ICT in education
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1 INTRODUCTION
HE advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has tremendous potential to im-prove the way students learn and communicate in
primary and secondary schools. Electronic textbooks (or e-Textbooks) are a digitized form of textbook, which incor-porates various multimedia content including video, au-dio, pictures, and slideshows; and it has been envisioned to replace existing paper-based textbook. While an e-book [1], [2] is merely a digitized form of book; e-Textbooks provide a wide range of advanced features such as pagina-tion, annotation, searching and indexing, copying and pasting, as well as communications, such as posting to social media. The integration of ICT into learning through e-Textbooks aim to enhance the students’ learning experi-ence using multimedia content including audio, video, animation, and built-in interactive functions (i.e. dictionar-ies, reference books and search functions). Table 1 shows the comparison of paper-based textbook and e-Textbook.
E-Textbooks provide three main advantages. Firstly, e-Textbooks reduce space and weight. Students are no long-er burdened with heavy textbooks. For example, if an e-Textbook with a substantial amount of multimedia content is approximately 1 GigaByte (GB) [3], 50 e-Textbooks may take up to 64G. Further reduction of memory requirement can be achieved through cloud computing, which provides on-demand availability of shared resources, software, and information [4]. Secondly, e-Textbooks provide easy back-
up and replacement. Loss of textbooks becomes a minor issue because e-Textbooks allow easy backup and re-placement. For example, students may download content from e-Textbook servers to their devices (e.g. iPad, laptop, PC, dedicated e-Textbook reader). E-Textbooks can be easily replaced because it is easier to update and distribute digital content (see Table 1). Thirdly, e-Textbooks provide easy updates. Students can search, update and access the latest content. Digital content can be easily created, edited and delivered over the internet, hence it caters for instant updates of latest content.
Recently, schools in the UK, USA and Australia have started pilot-testing using e-Textbook devices, such as Ap-ple’s iPad [5], [3] and Amazon’s Kindle [6], to convert pa-per-based textbooks into digital forms. Most countries are still in the initial stages of e-Textbook development and adoption. In spite of the advantages brought about by e-Textbooks, a wide range of off-the-shelf e-Textbooks are yet to be offered in K-12 education due to a wide range of open issues, particularly the ICT infrastructure, finance, as well as the support and integration of ICT into school cur-riculum [7], [8], [9]. Hence, paper-based textbooks remain as the main source of reference in schools. This article fo-cuses on the technological aspect of e-Textbooks.
With respect to e-Textbooks, this article provides an extensive survey of the state-of-the-art and open issues. The contributions of this article are as follows. Firstly, an extensive survey on three categories of e-Textbooks, name-ly web-based content, reading software and dedicated de-vice, is presented. Secondly, an extensive survey on the state-of-the-art of the three categories of e-Textbooks is presented. Thirdly, open issues are presented. Finally, conclusions are provided. All discussions are delivered in the form of a tutorial and recorded to establish a founda-tion for further research in this field.
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HeeJeong J. Lee is with School of Information Technology, Monash Univer-sity.
Chris Messom is with School of Information Technology, Monash Univer-sity.
Kok-Lim A. Yau is with Department of Computer Science and Networked System, Sunway University.
T
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COMPARISON OF E-TEXTBOOKS AND PAPER-BASED TEXTBOOKS
Charac-te-ristics and Fea-
tures
Paper-based text-books
e-Textbooks
Content types
-Text -Image
-Text -Image -Audio -Video -Virtual reality
Easiness to up-date
-Lower -Content may be-come outdated because newer editions may incur substantial in-vestment associat-ed with printing, preparing and dis-tributing new text-books
-Higher -Content may become more up-to-date because newer editions may in-cur lesser investment through digital updates -New updates can be widely distributed at very low cost
Access to refer-
ences
-Harder -Users may search for other paper-based references
-Easier -Users may click on links to view references
Interac-tivity
-Lower -Classes are mostly conducted in a non-interactive manner. Specifical-ly, teachers verbal-ly deliver lessons, while students listen, understand, follow and jot down instructions and notes.
-Higher -Classes are mostly con-ducted in an interactive manner. Specifically, teachers can deliver live lessons; while students can respond to requests and questions in a real-time manner. -Teachers can monitor students’ understanding and progress easily
2 CATEGORIES OF E-TEXTBOOKS
There are three categories of e-Textbooks based on their accessibility and usability [10], [11], namely web-based systems, reading software and dedicated devices. Accessi-bility to content of textbooks is a strict requirement to make e-Textbooks mandatory so that it is readily available to all teachers and students, including those from econom-ically disadvantaged families. Usability assesses how easy e-Textbooks are to use, and it covers user-friendly features in order to improve user satisfaction. Higher usability lev-el indicates easier to use, and so students can learn to use easily. The three categories of e-Textbooks are web-based content, reading software and dedicated devices. Web-based content. Textbook content of a standard for-mat (e.g. HTML and XML) is readily available on the in-ternet. Students can only download parts of textbooks to their devices for a fee or for free, and so internet access is mandatory. The content can be assessed by any device that provides a web browser, and so tailor-made software or applications, as well as devices are not required. Reading software. Textbook content of various formats (e.g. ACW and EPUB) is available on the internet and through digital distribution platforms (e.g. Apple® App Store and Android Play Store). Students must use specific reading software to read, and they can download the con-tent for a fee or for free. The reading software, which is
tailor-made to read content of certain formats, is down-loaded from the internet. Generally speaking, reading software is found in smart devices and tablet PC, such as Android phone, Android tablet, iPad® and iphone®. Dedicated device. The dedicated device is a tailor-made device for reading e-Textbooks. The dedicated device is comprised of various essential components including op-erating system (OS), network access (i.e. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) and display (i.e. electronic paper, LCD). E-Textbooks of dedicated device may appear in a wide range of formats including HTML, XML, ACW and EPUB, as well as some tailor-made formats. Students must use specific software found in the dedicated device to read e-Textbooks. Stu-dents can download e-Textbooks to their dedicated devic-es for a fee or for free from publishers’ websites.
The strengths and weaknesses of the three categories of e-Textbooks are shown in Table 2.
TABLE 2
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF E-TEXTBOOKS
Category Strengths Weaknesses
Web-based
content
-Accessible by any device that provides web browser
-Internet access is mandatory
Reading software
-The content of e-Textbooks are down-loadable for both online and offline uses
-Must use specific reading software to read -The reading soft-ware is tailor-made to read content of certain formats
Dedicated device
-Provide built-in and tailor-made func-tions such as submit-ting assignments through e-Textbooks, assessing students, and moni-toring students aca-demic performance
-Must use dedicated device to read -Must use specific reading software found in the dedi-cated device to read -Memory storage is limited depending on the device used. For instance, Apple® ipad® provides up to 64GB storage ca-pacity.
CD-ROMs may be preferable if e-Textbook devices are not affordable; or the latest features are not provided by existing e-Textbooks. For instance, technical and financial constraints, such as network speed [12], may hinder schools from obtaining the latest e-Textbook devices [13]. The need to protect copyrights of e-Textbooks may also discourage the use of e-Textbooks [12]. Although many e-Textbooks have been distributed in the form of CD-ROMs, it possesses several shortcomings that may prohibit the ideal usage of e-Textbooks in classrooms [13]. For exam-ple, CD-ROM has limited storage capacity, and it is not possible for several students to participate collaboratively in a lesson simultaneously. The reminder of this Section presents an extensive sur-vey on three categories of e-Textbooks. Web-based content: Web-based content is the most popu-lar type of e-Textbook. Generally speaking, web-based e-Textbooks provide conventional web browsing functions,
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and has a lack of custom-made features, such as annota-tion, screen capture, zoom in and out functions. Two ex-amples of web-based content are Flexbook and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Study. Flexbook (http://www.ck12.org) is a free and open source textbook platform as shown in Fig. 1. “CK-12 al-lows one to customize and produce content by re-purposing to suit what needs to be taught, using different modules that may suit a learner’s learning style, region, language, or level of skill, while adhering to the local edu-cation standards”.
Fig.1. Flexbook.
The Flexbook provide the following features [14]: • Access to free textbooks. For instance, this helps to
achieve the aims of CK-12 Foundation to minimize expenditure on textbooks, as well as to provide open and free educational resources.
• Provide customized content. Enable content cus-tomization to design user-created educational con-tent in order to reflect up-to-date content and to ca-ter for the different needs of students (e.g. an open, web-based collaborative model, content customized to reflect up-to-date).
• Ensure high-quality content. To ensure high-quality content of Flexbook, the CK-12 Community of Edu-cational Practitioners facilitates the review process of content. Specifically, each item must undergo four reviews prior to release.
• Easy sharing. Textbooks can be shared with others through email, website, Learning Management Sys-tem (LMS) and blog using links leading to the text-books.
• Provide various publishing formats. The content of e-Textbooks can be read in various format including pdf, online books, html and RSS feed.
Flexbooks content is mostly comprised of texts and im-ages, and so further efforts are necessary to increase mul-timedia content. Additionally, its content mainly follows the curriculum in US, and so further efforts are necessary to increase its international appeal. Barnes & Noble’s Nook Study (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nookstudy) is a web-based textbook rental service as shown in Fig. 2. Students
can borrow an e-Textbook for 60, 90, 130 days or even pur-chase the book.
Fig. 2. Barnes & Noble’s Nook Study e-Textbook.
Barnes & Noble’s Nook Study e-Textbooks provide the following features [15]:
• Notetaking. This enables students to take and read notes, as well as to save reference websites in e-Textbooks. Students can also print and export notes to Word or Text file formats.
• Easy search. Students can tag their notes, and search for terms in the notes.
• Key points highlight. Students can highlight and underline key points, concepts and definitions.
• Organize coursework. Students can arrange materi-als by subject. For instance, students can organize e-Textbooks, handouts and most reading materials in the same place.
Reading Software/Application: This type of e-Textbooks requires specific reading software or dedicated application to read and display e-Textbooks. It generally provides fea-tures such as table of contents, zoom in and out functions, content capture (i.e. capture key points and save them), and navigation (i.e. browse an entire e-Textbook easily to improve accessibility). Examples of free and open formats of reading software are PDF (Portable Document Format) and EPUB (Electronic PUBlication). EPUB has been formal-ized by International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) [16], and it has been a standard format used by most e-book reading software and devices including Sony Reader, iPh-one®, iPad® and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The EPUB for-mat contains text and images, such as GIF, SVG and JPEG [17]. Since PDF and EPUB do not fully support digital me-dia (i.e. video, audio, animation and interactive functions), this article does not cover these two formats. In this article, two types of reading software/applications are discussed, namely CourseSmartTM and Apple® iBooks® 2. CourseSmart™ (http://www.coursesmart.com) pro-vides an e-Textbook service using mobile devices includ-ing web, smart phones, iPad®, Android tablet and Kindle Fire [18] as shown in Fig. 3. With extensive partnership with major textbook publishers, such as Pearson (http://www.pearson.com), Cengage Learning (http://www.cengage.com) and McGraw-Hill Education
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(http://www.mcgraw-hill.com), it provides e-Textbook rental services at a cost less than (up to 60%) paper-based textbooks. Students can access e-Textbooks in both an online and offline manner.
Fig. 3. CourseSmart for smartphone. Available from: http://itunes.apple.com. Last accessed 20/12/2011.
CourseSmart provides the following features [18]: • Bookshelf and Navigation functions. It provides
bookshelf, which provides quick access to saved materials, and linked table of content.
• Notetaking and key points highlight. Students can add notes, as well as highlight and underline key points, concepts and definitions. Students can also create bookmarks.
• Print Pages. Students can print (or copy and paste) up to a certain number of pages of an e-Textbooks.
• Automatic Updates. It provides automatic updates, therefore constant updates and downloads of latest information are not necessary.
Apple® iBooks® 2, which is an e-Textbook application, provides multiple choice quizzes, reference links, videos, as well as slideshows created from images as shown in Fig. 4. With partnerships with textbook makers Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [3], [19], it provides extensive educational content. Students can download iBooks® 2 applications from application mar-ketplace, namely app store, for free. Some textbooks may cost less than US$15 [3], [19]. iBooks® 2 provides the following features [20], [21]:
• Provide thumbnail index: Students are able to read through an e-Textbook from page to page “using a visual index” (i.e thumbnails that indicate the sec-tions of a book), along with a text line-up. Students can browse with ease the chapters and sections by sweeping their fingers across the main index page.
• Provide built-in videos: Videos are accompanied with texts and scripts, such as subtitle, providing more information, much like a teacher providing close guidance on the subject matter being taught in a video.
• Provides interactive animations: The textbooks uti-lize interactive animations. These animations work like the videos and images.
• Quizzes and review questions: There are built-in quizzes and review questions available at the end of each chapter in e-Textbooks.
• Study cards: The iBooks® app converts highlights and notes into study cards. With its 3D effect, the cards look like actual library cards.
• Note sharing: Students can easily share their note with others.
Fig. 4. e-Textbooks from iBooks® 2 for iPad®. Available from:
http://www.extremetech.com. Last accessed 21/1/2012.
Each iBooks® 2 e-Textbook may take up to 1GB, and so there are two drawbacks. Firstly, iPad® provides a limited storage capacity of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB. In addition to e-Textbooks, students may store other documents and files in the device. Hence, students may need to use external storage devices or cloud computing. Secondly, download-ing e-Textbooks with multimedia content may require high bandwidth. Sufficient amount of network bandwidth should be provided in schools. Dedicated device: This type of e-Textbooks requires dedi-cated device, such as tablets, hand-held devices and mul-tipurpose devices, for displaying and reading e-Textbooks. Generally speaking, e-Textbook content for dedicated de-vices are provided by certain publishers, and hence dedi-cated devices face great competition from emerging prod-ucts such as iPad and Android tablet PC, which have a diverse ecosystem consisting of application developers and manufacturers. Governments or school authorities who develop tailor-made dedicated devices should con-sider reliable after-sales services, which are commonplace in off-the-shelf devices. Hence, further efforts are neces-sary so that dedicate devices can provide similar reliable after-sales services through manufacturer’s network. Son et al. [22] have identified several dedicated devices includ-ing eduPAD and MalayBook. eduPAD, which is a project developed by the Singa-pore’s Ministry of Education since 1999 [23], is a hand-held wireless computer as shown in Fig. 5. The eduPAD weighs about 800 grams, and it is equipped with an 18cm color display, a built-in microphone, a speaker and a keyboard (i.e. Stylus and Virtual), as well as a rechargeable battery
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that can last up to six hours. In addition to 16MB memory, the device provides interfacing slots to data storage cards [24]. The government and industry partners have invested about SG$2.1 million (approximately US$1.62 million) for the eduPAD project. The industrial partners have been actively involved in hardware and software development of eduPAD; while the Ministry of Education have been actively conducted training and explored the use of eduPAD in school trials [25]. The school textbooks have been converted to eduBOOK providing “hypermedia fea-tures to help students search for information and enhance their understanding of concepts” by animations and audio effects [24].
Fig. 5. eduPAD device. Available from: http://www.aare.edu.au/01pap/atp01299.htm. Last accessed
12/12/2011
eduPAD provides the following features [24]: • Save e-Textbooks in memory chips. Inserting the e-
Textbook memory chips into the interfacing slots of eduPAD allows students to read e-Textbooks.
• Download and submit assignment. Students can download assignment and submit their completed assignments online.
• Instant feedback. Teachers can give instant feedback on students’ performance.
• Plan and organize timetables. Students can use eduPAD to plan and organize their timetable, as well as to set up a task list in order to prioritize their work.
However, the use of eduPAD has been constrained by several issues including the requirement of high-speed internet connectivity, high battery lifetime and high sys-tem processing capability. Further efforts are necessary to address these issues. Malaybooks, which were developed to replace paper-based textbooks with the support of the Malaysian gov-ernment in 2002 as shown in Fig. 6, was a joint venture entitled “One Ed Dot Com”, consisting of Ericsson and several public and private entities in Malaysia. Approxi-mately 8,000 students participated in pilot testing of e-Textbooks. Malaybook provides the following features [26]:
• Use standard netBook. A MalayBook can be trans-formed into a standard netBook by replacing the
user-replaceable ROM chip. Generally speaking, a standard netBook has smaller screens and key-boards, as well as reduced computing power com-pared to a laptop.
• Provide free software. A wide range of software is available for free.
Further efforts are necessary to upgrade the operating system and e-Textbooks in order to increase its usage.
Fig. 6. Malaybook device. Available from: http://encyclopedia.mitrasites.com/imgs/psion-netbook.html Last ac-
cessed 3/5/2012
3 OPEN ISSUES
This section discusses the open issues associated with e-Textbooks. In this article, the open issues are categorized based on five main characteristics pertinent to the successful integration of e-Textbooks into the education system, namely reliability, compatibility, usability, accessibility and maintain-ability. Additionally, other relevant open issues are discussed. Reliability, which shares the same notion with trustwor-thiness and dependability, is defined as “the degree of con-sistency” among users when making observations “of the same service” [27]. Lack of reliability may lead to service fail-ures (e.g. as a result of power interruption) and inconven-iences, and so students may not be able to access learning material and learning history. Further efforts are necessary to ensure high reliability so that teaching and learning can be conducted without interruption at all times, as well as wide adoption of e-Textbooks in the near future. For instance, im-proving reliability in web-based systems ensures that internet connection is assessable at all times. Compatibility. There are two kinds of compatibility, namely software compatibility and hardware compatibility. Software compatibility is the ability of an application to on different computers without the need to change its format; while hardware compatibility is the ability to connect different de-vices without the use of certain equipment or software [28]. The inclusion of multimedia and interactivity features into various e-book formats (e.g. PDF, ePub, txt and html) has
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produced a wide range of e-Textbook formats. Additionally, different countries may use different formats. Hence, a stu-dent who purchase and install a particular vendor lock-in reader may not be able to access content from different ven-dors and countries, as well as to transfer e-Textbooks from one level (primary school) to another level (secondary school). Catone [29] and Sadon & Yamshon [30] discuss about the issue of incompatibility between e-Textbook content and reading device, and that the "format" war for e-Textbooks is a hurdle that must be overcome. Further efforts are necessary to define a standard format for e-Textbooks. For instance, improving compatibility in e-Textbook content ensures that e-Textbooks are accessible by most reading software and dedi-cated devices, and this avoids vendor lock-in products. Usability is defined as “a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use” [31]. In other words, it indi-cates how easy e-Textbooks are to use. For instance, students must find it easy to locate content, to navigate from one sec-tion to another, to do notetaking, and to submit assignment. Less usability discourages students from using e-Textbooks. Further efforts are necessary to leverage existing easy-to-use features so that students can learn and are accustomed to e-Textbooks easily. For instance, improving usability in web-based systems allows users to enjoy new features such as zoom in and out, capture and navigate most pages in e-Textbooks. Accessibility is defined as “the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible” [32]. The content of e-Textbook should be made accessible to all students without technical constraints. As an example, multiple users are able to access an e-Textbook con-currently. As another example, without using the latest iPad®, students are able to access the latest e-Textbooks. Since e-Textbooks must be endorsed by the government, schools must ensure that students can gain access to e-Textbooks without any technical obstacles, and hence, there is an urgent need to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban communities. Further efforts are necessary to support accessibility to e-Textbooks, particularly among the financial-ly disadvantaged students. For instance, improving accessi-bility allows users to access e-Textbooks at most of the times. Maintainability is defined as “the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to isolate defects or their cause, correct defects or their cause, meet new requirements, make future maintenance easier, or cope with a changed environ-ment” [33]. Upon adoption of e-Textbooks in schools, the ability to maintain its functions over a long term is critical; and schools are responsible for any damages, losses or defects of e-Textbook devices and servers. Both hardware (e.g. memory capacity) and software (e.g. operating system) up-dates should be made easy to e-Textbooks, and the required skills to perform maintenance should be made easy so as not to limit the skills to certain manufacturers and vendors only. As an example of maintainability, the operating system and software application should be easily upgradable in order to accommodate new content. Hence, further efforts are neces-sary to investigate into maintainability factor of e-Textbooks. For instance, improving maintainability enables users to in-crease the memory capacity of dedicated device if there is limited storage capacity.
4 CONCLUSION
An electronic textbook (e-Textbook) is an electronic and
interactive form of textbook. There are three categorizes
of e-Textbooks, namely web-based content, reading
software/application, and dedicated device. Generally
speaking, different categories of e-Textbooks use differ-
ent underlying device (i.e. hardware and software) to
access e-Textbooks.
This article provides an extensive review on the vari-
ous categories of state-of-the-art e-Textbooks, which is
at an early stage of research and development. The
open issues raised in this article serve as a foundation
for further investigations in developing and distrib-
uting e-Textbooks, which is highly preferred choice of
tool for teaching and learning.
As part of the future work, there are two main areas,
namely business models and digital management
rights. Firstly, there is an urgent need to develop viable
business models for authors, publishers, governments,
school district, schools, teachers, students and other
users of e-Textbooks. Since the e-Textbook market is
still emerging, and the e-Textbooks must be endorsed
by the government, the success of business model de-
pends on government’s support and a good ecosystem,
which may include various stakeholders, specifically
hardware suppliers, content publishers, distribution
channels, teachers and students. Secondly, there is an
urgent need to ensure digital management rights for e-
Textbooks. To prevent illegal duplication and distribu-
tion of e-Textbooks, the editing and authoring processes
must be made secure. For instance, further investigation
could be pursued to develop an automated review pro-
cess so that the editors are informed of any digital right
violations should it occur.
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[3] D. Rushe and J. Vasagar. (2012, 20 Jan 2012). Apple: iBooks 2 will
HeeJeong J. Lee She has a BSc. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea, a MSc. (Computer Science) from the University of Edinburgh, UK, a MPhil. (Technology Policy) from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her thesis has been submitted to the school of information tech-nology at the University of Monash. She was awarded a merit prize in the e-learning category at a national-level competition (APICTA 2011), and won a gold award at the 23rd International Invention, In-
novation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX2012). Her research interests lie in the field of ICT in education (e-learning, m-learning) and educa-tional policy and planning. She has extensive experience in the de-sign of e-learning platform, developing e-learning contents and provid-ing ICT consulting at Korea Telecom R&D. Her research interest in-cludes developing and evaluating of electronic textbooks and building ICT-enhanced education policy to-be a model. Chris Messom Professor Chris Messom is the Deputy President (Academic) at Monash University Sunway Campus and the Associate Director (Malaysia) of the Monash e-Research Centre. He has a PhD in computer studies and research experience in systems development for intelligent systems including for eLearning. His research area in-cludes in intelligent systems, GRID computing and artifical intelligent. Prof Messom is an active supervisor, he has supervised many mas-ters and PhD students as well as numerous honours and postgradu-ate students to successful completion.
Kok-Lim A. Yau He has a B.Eng. degree in Electrical and Electronics Department of Computer Science and Networked System, Sunway University Engineering (First Class Honors) from the Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia, a M.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) from the National University of Singapore, and a Ph.D. (Network Engineer-ing) from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand . He was awarded the 2007 Professional Engineer Board of Singapore Gold Medal for being the best graduate of the M.Sc. degree in 2006/07. He researches, lectures and consults in cognitive radio, wireless network-ing and applied artificial intelligence. He is a member of the Perva-sive Computing Research Group, Department of Computer Science and Networked System, Sunway University.
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