This paper presents a reference architecture known as Virtual Physical Space which can be adapted to build Internet of Things applications in various domains. The close relationship under Cyber-Physical Spaces, Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical-Social Spaces are also discussed. Furthermore, the basic building components of the proposed architecture are presented in the paper.

Training in STEM centers is becoming increasingly relevant in order to meet the new educational needs caused mainly by the rapid speed with which new technologies have been entering our lives in recent years. Existing university e-learning systems can enhance the capacity of these centers by providing shared learning material. This paper presents a distributed educational platform that supports sharable usage of teaching material at university and in STEM centers in secondary schools. The architecture of the platform is also presented including two basic components. The university e-learning environment operates as a back-end and the front-end component is located in the STEM center. Furthermore, the implemented prototype of the platform is also discussed in the article. The use of the platform is demonstrated by two educational games. The platform is expanded with four educational robots to increase the attractiveness of the educational process.

This paper presents an environment which generates tests automatically. It is designed for assistance in the software engineering education and is part of the Virtual Education Space. The environment has two functionalities – generation and assessment of different types of test questions. In the paper, the architecture of the environment is described in detail. The test generation is supported by specialized ontologies, which are served by two intelligent agents known as Questioner Operative and Assessment Operative.

This paper presents test environment that is intended to support e-learning in software engineering education. The environment is part of the Virtual Education Space [8] and consists of two operatives named Questioner Operatives. They support automatic generation and assessment of the test questions by using ontologies. These operatives are implemented as intelligent agents that use structured educational content (an ontology in the Unified Modeling Language domain) to generate and assess different types of test questions, according to the QTI (Questions and Test Interoperability) [19] specification.

The e-learning environment known as VES (the Virtual Education Space) was created at the University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski” in Bulgaria step by step for years as each subsequent version was built on the previous one. Initially a learning system called DeLC (the Distributed e-Learning Center) has been implemented to support blended and independent learning at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the university. DeLC was a successful project, but we identified some problems, connected with interactions between the virtual and the physical world where in fact the learning process takes place. In the following period, we started the development of ViPS (the Virtual Physical Space) based on concepts of CPSS (Cyber-Physical-Social System) and IoT (Internet of Things). VES is the ViPS adaptation to education. VES is the successor to DeLC, it provides e-learning content and e-learning education services for planning, organizing, and conducting the learning process at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Plovdiv.VES supports various forms of e-learning such as blended learning, self-paced learning, lifelong learning, inclusive and game-based learning (GBL). The following aspects of VES are essential: 1) users are the focus of attention; 2) physical “things” are virtualized; 3) there is integration between the virtual and the physical worlds. Since ViPS is developed as a CPSS ecosystem, users are the focus of attention. This determines the need to develop personal assistants to participate in the processes of the ViPS space on behalf of and in the interest of users. Three intelligent agents are modeled in VES: an internal educational agent, an external educational agent, and a career consultant. MATE (the Multi-Agent Testing Environment) is a component supported in the ViPS space for training and testing of students in a game-based manner. MATE is a set of autonomous agents, each one of which has responsibilities in the common architecture that arise from training and testing needs.As a CPSS space, VES introduces new approaches and scenarios to solve complex problems in the field of e-learning. VES provides a reference architecture, which can be adapted for various forms of education supported by information and communication technologies.