Education (Courses)

Next Generation Web Information Systems

This is an exciting course in the development of web-based systems using Web services components. Students will learn about the about the foundations of the latest technologies for developing systems for the web (Intelligent Agents, SOA, Mash-ups, etc.), as well as theoretical and practical aspects (reinforced from individual assignments and a team project) of all phases of the software life cycle, especially about software requirements specifications techniques, analysis, design, implementation and testing. The team project is build on a real case study and the implementation is based on ‘assembling and extending existing components instead of writing the entire program from scratch’, this makes the course open for a wide audience including participants with very little or no programming experience.

Implementing Business Application

To enable the implementation of the information strategy, the rapid development and implementation of business applications is paramount. In order to accelerate this process, an in-depth knowledge of business processes and the role of information, and business applications are required. This core course will focus on developing business modelling skills. Students will use basic modelling concepts in a concrete case study and develop an information system that supports the business processes, in line with the information strategy. Modelling tools are used that support the analysis of the business case, communicate the design, accelerate the implementation, and enable evaluation of the system. There will be an emphasis on business applications that support the management and analysis of enterprise data. The development of business applications will be analysed in its organisational context and will be connected with project management issues.

Multi-Agent System Research Workshop

This exciting new research course is designed to familiarize MPhil and Ph.D. students with a wide variety of issues in the domain of intelligent multi-agents systems. The course is designed to help students to develop and deepen their own research ideas. The study of agents presents a unique opportunity to integrate results from many diverse areas of research, such as artificial intelligence, behavioural science, computer science, economics, information systems, operations research, social sciences, and software engineering. Thus the aim of this course is to expose students to the state of the art in research on multi-agent systems to gather information and to facilitate decision making in business and economic environments. In addition to providing students with knowledge in the area of multi-agents systems, students will get familiarized with the methods and paradigms used in the area.

Modern business networks and markets are highly dynamic and exhibit a high degree of uncertainty. Under these conditions business managers are routinely faced with complex strategic, tactical, and operational decisions; decisions ranging from the macroscopic (i.e. which markets should we enter and when?) to the microscopic (i.e. which products should be packed on which pallet?). Also customers are faced with multi attribute decisions, such as from whom can I book a travel under certain constraints (money, time, quality, etc)? Within this workshop we investigate how learning agents may be designed to support humans in these decision making processes. We define learning agents as software entities that carry out some set of operations on behalf of a user or another program with some degree of independence or autonomy, improve their performance from experience and in so doing employ some knowledge or representation of the user's goals or needs. [ More]