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This paper examines the cloud computing for education (CCE) literature, and analyzes if the research is developing scientifically with adequate empirical validation. All aspects of empirical investigations covered in the literature are shown as weak, hence, the necessary scientific development of CCE requires extending its scope of interest, and involving scholars synergistically to create and maintain a "common research agenda." Background: A need to develop research on CCE has been recognized, and considerable efforts made to create an accurate understanding of the development of its scope of interest, in terms of supporting pedagogical developments and processes for better quality of studies. Research Questions: This paper has three main aims: 1) to evaluate the scope of interest in the literature for CCE with specific reference to pedagogy and educational processes; 2) to analyze the characteristics of papers, specifically empirical studies, from the various points of view of the daily improvement activities of teachers and learners at all levels of education; and 3) to identify eventual research gaps to consider and stimulate new topics or further investigations. Methodology: This systematic mapping study review followed a rigorous, replicable process to collect and analyze representative studies of CCE. Findings: Differences are found across geographic areas in applying CCE infrastructure and technologies in educational institutions; few studies address CCE's impact on pedagogic processes. The scope of interest in CCE is only partially covered; with empirical research being very shallow. Suggestions are made for more effective research on concerning the production and use of content.

When talking about sustainability, we usually think that it is only about safeguarding the environment; nothing is further from reality. Of course, the environment is a crucial component of sustainability and our survival, but it is important to recall that the society and the economy play important roles in this regard, and without the interconnection and development of these three perspectives it will not be possible to achieve sustainable progress. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations (UN) defend this idea and address the main challenges that humanity faces. One of these challenges is gender equality, which is identified in the perspective of social sustainability through SDG 5. Gender equality is a very complex and difficult challenge to address due to the great cultural diversity of our society. Thus, achieving this goal will require laying a solid foundation and working together by combining very different fields of knowledge. In this sense, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the fields that is currently having the greatest impact and relevance for the development of new technologies and for the advancement of numerous areas. This growing evolution of AI demonstrates that its repercussions at the social level must be analyzed and addressed in such a way that AI becomes a positive asset for sustainability and, in this particular case, for gender equality. For all these reasons, this study aims to analyze the current state of the art and collect the existing knowledge in the fields of AI and gender equality, by conducting a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS). The obtained results and findings have allowed us to identify the most relevant advances in this regard, as well as the gaps and drawbacks that currently exist and on which we must urgently focus to address gender equality both in and by AI. In the same way, these findings demonstrate the limited joint development of both fields, but also indicate an increase in the relevance and the number of proposals that these fields are receiving in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, we have been witnessing a rapid increase of research on exergames—i.e., computer games that require users to move during gameplay as a form of physical activity and rehabilitation. Properly balancing the need to develop an effective exercise activity with the requirements for a smooth interaction with the software system and an engaging game experience is a challenge. Model-driven software engineering enables the fast prototyping of multiple system variants, which can be very useful for exergame development. In this paper, we propose a framework, PhyDSLK, which eases the development process of personalized and engaging Kinect-based exergames for rehabilitation purposes, providing high-level tools that abstract the technical details of using the Kinect sensor and allows developers to focus on the game design and user experience. The system relies on model-driven software engineering technologies and is made of two main components: (i) an authoring environment relying on a domain-specific language to define the exergame model encapsulating the gameplay that the exergame designer has envisioned and (ii) a code generator that transforms the exergame model into executable code. To validate our approach, we performed a preliminary empirical evaluation addressing development effort and usability of the PhyDSLK framework. The results are promising and provide evidence that people with no experience in game development are able to create exergames with different complexity levels in one hour, after a less-than-two-hour training on PhyDSLK. Also, they consider PhyDSLK usable regardless of the exergame complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability is a problem that is increasingly worrying organisations around the world, which has led them to adopt sustainable practices in their processes. From the point of view of one of the areas that have had the greatest impact in recent times in organisations, the area of information technology (IT), different sustainable practices have arisen in isolation, known as Green IT practices. So, a framework that organises and establishes these practices (until now isolated) is necessary in order to implement, assess, and improve the Green IT in organisations in an efficient, gradual, and integrated way. In this study, the authors propose a maturity model based on capability maturity model integration (CMMI), through which it is intended to help organisations gradually implement and improve through different levels of maturity, the governance and management of Green IT. The validations of this proposal carried out through experts and practical cases demonstrate the usefulness of this proposal when implementing, assessing, and improving the Green IT in organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the cloud computing for education (CCE) literature, and analyzes if the research is developing scientifically with adequate empirical validation. All aspects of empirical investigations covered in the literature are shown as weak, hence, the necessary scientific development of CCE requires extending its scope of interest, and involving scholars synergistically to create and maintain a “common research agenda.” Background: A need to develop research on CCE has been recognized, and considerable efforts made to create an accurate understanding of the development of its scope of interest, in terms of supporting pedagogical developments and processes for better quality of studies. Research Questions: This paper has three main aims: 1) to evaluate the scope of interest in the literature for CCE with specific reference to pedagogy and educational processes; 2) to analyze the characteristics of papers, specifically empirical studies, from the various points of view of the daily improvement activities of teachers and learners at all levels of education; and 3) to identify eventual research gaps to consider and stimulate new topics or further investigations. Methodology: This systematic mapping study review followed a rigorous, replicable process to collect and analyze representative studies of CCE. Findings: Differences are found across geographic areas in applying CCE infrastructure and technologies in educational institutions; few studies address CCE’s impact on pedagogic processes. The scope of interest in CCE is only partially covered; with empirical research being very shallow. Suggestions are made for more effective research on concerning the production and use of content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Green Information Technology (IT) has grown enormously, and has become an increasingly important and essential area, providing multiple benefits to the organizations that focus on it. It is for this reason that there is an increasing number of organizations embracing the idea of Green IT. However, Green IT is a very young field and each organization implements it according to its own criteria. That is why it is extremely important to develop the bases or best practices of governance and management that allow organizations to implement Green IT practices correctly and standardize them. In this article, we propose the "Governance and Management Framework for Green IT", establishing the characteristics needed to carry out the governance and management of Green IT in an organization, and perform audits in this area. This framework is based on COBIT 5, which is a general framework for the control and audit of different areas related to IT. The results obtained through different validations demonstrate the validity and usefulness of the framework developed in the field of Green IT, providing a complete guide to the organizations in their efforts to implement, control and/or improve the practices of Green IT in their processes and day-to-day operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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ISO has recently published Part 7 of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard, with the aim of determining the extent to which an organization consistently implements processes that contribute to achievement of its business goals. This new Part 7 of ISO/IEC 15504 has addressed issues related to the assessment of organizational maturity, as the CMMI-DEV model also does. Recently, growing interest has been shown towards the need to harmonize different improvement models or standards, thereby presenting an integrated vision about them. All this being so and in an effort to offer information on how the maturity levels described in these two models are related, we have carried out the harmonization of these two models. It is based, firstly, on a mapping between processes of ISO 12207:08 and process areas of CMMI-DEV, and in second place, on a matching between processes of ISO 12207:08 and ISO 15504-5. For this work, we have taken into account the latest versions of the models, and defined a suitable process to carry out the mapping in a systematic way. We established differences and similarities between the maturity levels (and their processes) described in these models, our goal being to support organizations which are interested in tackling organizational maturity. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transfer of research results in production systems requires, among others, that knowledge be explicit and understandable by stakeholders. Such transfer is demanding, as so many researchers have been studying alternative ways to classic approaches such as books and papers that favour knowledge acquisition on behalf of users. In this context, we propose the concept of Knowledge Experience Package (KEP) with a specific structure as an alternative. The KEP contains both the conceptual model(s) of the research results which make up the innovation, including all the necessary documentation ranging from papers or book chapters; and the experience collected in acquiring it in business processes, appropriately structured. The structure allows the identification of the knowledge chunk(s) that the developer, who is acquiring the knowledge, needs in order to simplify the acquisition process. The experience is needed to point out the scenarios that the user will most likely face and therefore refer to. Both structure and experience are important factors for the innovation transferability and efficacy. Furthermore, we have carried out an experiment which compared the efficacy of this instrument with the classic ones, along with the comprehensibility of the information enclosed in a KEP rather than in a set of Papers. The experiment has pointed out that knowledge packages are more effective than traditional ones for knowledge transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various topics published within the issue, including one by Karl Cox, Mahmood Niazi, and June Verner on engineering practices, another by Valerie Maxville, Jocelyn Armarego, and Chiou Peng Lam on software selection, and another by Lerina Aversano, Luigi Cerulo, and Massimiliano Di Penta on open source projects.