Nomusa DLODLO, Lawrance HUNTER, Cyprian CELE

A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM TO TRAIN THE SOUTH AFRICAN RURAL FARMERS THROUGH A VSAT-ENABLED INTERNET SERVICE

This paper describes an infrastructure to facilitate training the rural farmer and its impact on agricultural income. It describes a distributed communications architecture that connects VSAT-enabled rural telecentres to a central agricultural centre which disseminates information and provides training to farmers on agriculture. This paper recommends the integration of an intelligent tutoring software system for training rural farmers. Taking into consideration that rural areas might not be close to the National Electricity Grid, the project proposes solar energy as an alternative source of energy to power the remote telecentres. This paper looks at wool contamination as an example. Due to limited access to communication and information rural farmers are not well informed on the effects of high levels of contaminants on the price of that wool. When wool, is contaminated the auction prices are decreased

Keywords:

Wool contamination, VSAT, Internet Knowledge-based, Intelligent tutoring, Expert system,

PDF

___

1. Aiken, M.W., Sheung, O.R.L., Vogel, D.R., 1991, “Integrating expert systems with group decision support systems”, ACM Transactions on information systems (TOIS), Vol: 9(1), pp: 75-95 . 2. Ashely, K.D., Aleven, V., 1991, “Towards an intelligent tutoring system for teaching law students to argue with cases”, International conference on artificial intelligence and law, Proceedings of 3rd International conference on artificial intelligence and law, pp: 42-52.
3. Blackboard Inc. Blackboard course management system, 2002, Blackboard Inc, www.blackboard.com/.
4. Bonar, J., Cunningham, R., Schultz, J., 1986, “An object-oriented architecture for intelligent tutoring systems”, Proceedings of OOPSA’86, pp: 269- 276.
5. Brusilivsky, P., 2004, K”nowledge tree: a distributed architecture for adaptive e-learning”, WWW’04, pp: 104-113.
6. Buchanan, B., Smith, R., 1988, “Fundamentals of expert systems", Annual review of computer science Vol: 3, pp: 23-58.
7. Chau, K.W., Albermani, F., 2004, “An expert system on design of liquidretaining structures with blackboard architecture”, Expert Systems, Vol: 21(4), pp: 183-191.
8. Devedzic, V., Debenham, J., Popovic, D., 2000, “Teaching formal languages by an intelligent tutoring system”, Educational Technology and Society, Vol: 3(2), pp: 1-18.
9. Feng, M., Heffernan, N.T., Koedinger, K.R., 2006, “E-learning and scientific applications: addressing the testing challenge with web-based eassessment system that tutors as it assesses”, Proceedings of the 15th International conference on Word Wide Web WWW’06.
10. Fleet, M.R., Mahar, J., Turk, J.A., 2000, “Merino crossbreeding and objectionable sheep fibres: the problem and potential solution”, Wool industry science and technology conference, paper 41, Hamilton, Victoria, Australia.
11. Foulds, R.A., 1988, “Dark fibre contamination in wool: its predictions and ramifications”, Proceedings of seminar on technical feasibility of sale of wool by description, CSIRO division of wool technology, Sydney, Australia, pp: 127.
12. Giarratano, J., Riley, G.D., 2003, “Expert systems: principles and programming”, Course Technology Inc., ISBN-13: 9780534384470.
13. Hill, J.M.D., Alford, K.L., 2004, “A distributed task environment for teaching artificial intelligence with agents”, ACM SIGCSE Bulletins, Proceedings of 35th SIGCSE technical symposium on computer science education, SIGCSE’04, Vol: 36(1).
14. Koike, H., Akama, K., Chiba, M., et.al., 2005, “Developing an e-learning system which enhances students’ academic motivation”, SIGUCCS’05, pp: 147-150.
15. Kurtz, B.L., Oliver, R.I., Collins, E.M., 1991, “The design, implementation and use of DSTutor”, ACM Proceedings, pp: 169-177.
16. Liu, N.K., Lee, K.K., 1997, “An intelligent business advisor for stock investment”, Expert Systems, Vol: 14(3), pp: 129-139. 17. LRcorp, LXRTest, www.lxrtest.com, 1996
18. Michaud, L.N., McCoy, K.F., Pennington, C.A., 2000, “An intelligent tutoring system for deaf learners of written English”, ASSETS’00, pp: 92- 100.
19. Mok, H.M.K., 1995, “A hedonic approach to pricing of residential properties in Hong Kong”, Hong Kong journal of Business Management, Vol: 8, pp. 1-15.
20. Seffah, A., Bari, M., Desmarais, M., 1999, “Assessing object-oriented technology using an Internet-based system”, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Proceedings of the 4th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSE conference on innovation and technology in computer science education, ITiCSE’99, pp: 71-74.
21. Shah, H., Kumar, A.N., 2002, “A tutoring system for parameter passing in programming languages”, ITiCSE’02, pp: 170-174.
22. Shang, Y., Shi, H., Chen, S., 2001, “An intelligent environment for active learning”, ACM Journal of educational resources in computing, Vol: 1(2), pp. 1-17.
23. Siemer, J., 1994, “Embedding an intelligent tutoring system in a business gaming-simulation environment”, Proceedings of the 1994 Winter Simulations Conference, Tew, J.D., Manivannan, S., Sadowski, D.A., Seila, A.F. (eds), pp: 1399-1406.
24. Tinoco, L.C., Fox, E.A., 1997, Dwight Barnett, N., “Online evaluation in WWW_based courseware”, SIGCSE’97, pp: 194-198.
25. Virvou, M., Moundridou, M., 2000, “A web-based authoring tool for algebrarelated intelligent tutroring systems”, Educational Technology and Society, Vol: 3(2), pp: 1-15.
26. Waterman D.A., 1985, A guide to expert systems,. Addison Wesley Publishing, Computer, ISBN-13: 978- 0201083132. . 27. WebCT. WebCT course management system, Lynnfield MA, WebCT Inc, http://www.webct.com/, 2002
28. Harris, J., Wool production – calculating wool-income, http:/www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/sheep/1212 1.html, 2006