Abstract
In traditional learning, teachers can easily get an insight into how their students work and learn and how they interact in the classroom. However, in online learning, it is more difficult for teachers to see how individual students behave. With the enormous growing of e-learning platforms, as complementary or even primary tool to support learning in organizations, monitoring students' success factors becomes a crucial issue. In this paper we focus on the importance of stress in the learning process. Stress detection in an E-learning environment is an important and crucial factor to success. Estimating, in a non-invasive way, the students' levels of stress, and taking measures to deal with it, is then the goal of this paper. Moodle, by being one of the most used e-learning platforms is used to test the log tool referred in this work. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.

Abstract

Abstract
Nowadays achieving sustainable development is a global concern. The issue of unsustainability can be related to population growth and excessive consumption of natural resources. To tackle these issues, several management tools and methodologies have been developed in the last years, to assess, analyse and improve the environmental and economic performance of production systems. This work presents an approach based value stream mapping in order to assess and improve energy efficiency, environmental performance and financial performance of a production system. The developed approach can be applied to any industry or production system, where all the unit processes involved are identified and the inputs/outputs of each unit system quantified and easily perceived. Key environmental performance indicators and the corresponding eco-efficiency ratios arise as outcomes of this approach, in which a Multi-Layer Stream Mapping (MSM) with visual management attributes is created.

Abstract
The integrated planning of several activities implicated in paper production can lead to remarkable gains in terms of raw materials and resource usage. However, activities such as order assignment, production sequencing and cutting planning are usually addressed separately while ignoring the interactions among these processes. But the quality of the solution resulting from the juxtaposition of the partial solutions is not guaranteed, and may have a significant impact in terms of inefficiency of global performance. This article considers production planning in a pulp and paper industry in order to meet a set of orders of diverse types of products, admitting the possibility of producing simultaneously in two or more paper machines with their own features. The developed approach, ASC-3Steps, considers not only cutting optimisation but also extends itself to the processes of assigning orders to paper machines and production sequencing at each machine. Minimisation of wasted paper is assumed to be the overall goal. A set of computational results based on real data is presented.

Abstract

Abstract