Towards a semantic modeling of learners in e-learning from communities of practice perspective

摘要

It is an honor to welcome you to the fourth Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference 2007 in this magical place --- Orlando Florida.

With more than 300 students, professors, and researchers all engaged with one another, this Tapia conference continues to honor the leadership and technical excellence exemplified by Dr. Richard Tapia.

It was Dr. Tapia who first readjusted my own aspirations and set in motion not only my graduate career, but also my current professional work at the national laboratories. We replicate these expectations, supported with technical feedback and guidance, in our closed-door Doctoral Consortium for the next generation of technical leaders. It is Dr. Tapia's enduring expectation that those of us in under-represented groups will serve as leaders and role models. I challenge you all to meet those expectations.

The conference theme, "Passion in Computing, Diversity in Innovation", reflects the euphoric highs and the challengesof our chosen field. We are an inquisitive bunch, exploring, expounding, and sharing our passion for computing with anyone willing to hear our technical paper presentations, view our poster presentations, and witness our robotics operations in competition. But not all the problems we address are technical. We face many challenges in broadening participation in computing, in opening doors and keeping them open. To help achieve these goals, our Technical Program Co-Chairs Dr. Ronald Metoyer and Dr. Tiffani Williams have organized many panels and workshops for sharing ideas, discussing them, and understanding how to improve our computing field.