An investigation into computer and network curricula

This thesis consists of a series of internationally published, peer reviewed, journal and conference research papers that analyse the educational and training needs of undergraduate Information Technology (IT) students within the area of Computer and Network Technology (CNT) Education. Research by Maj et al has found that accredited computing science curricula can fail to meet the expectations of employers in the field of CNT: “It was found that none of these students could perform first line maintenance on a Personal Computer (PC) to a professional standard with due regard to safety, both to themselves and the equipment. Neither could they install communication cards, cables and network operating system or manage a population of networked PCs to an acceptable commercial standard without further extensive training. It is noteworthy that none of the students interviewed had ever opened a PC. It is significant that all those interviewed for this study had successfully completed all the units on computer architecture and communication engineering (Maj, Robbins, Shaw, & Duley, 1998). The students\u27 curricula at that time lacked units in which they gained hands-on experience in modern PC hardware or networking skills. This was despite the fact that their computing science course was level one accredited, the highest accreditation level offered by the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The results of the initial survey in Western Australia led to the introduction of two new units within the Computing Science Degree at Edith Cowan University (ECU), Computer Installation & Maintenance (CIM) and Network Installation & Maintenance (NIM) (Maj, Fetherston, Charlesworth, & Robbins, 1998). Uniquely within an Australian university context these new syllabi require students to work on real equipment. Such experience excludes digital circuit investigation, which is still a recommended approach by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for computer architecture units (ACM, 2001, p.97). Instead, the CIM unit employs a top-down approach based initially upon students\u27 everyday experiences, which is more in accordance with constructivist educational theory and practice. These papers propose an alternate model of IT education that helps to accommodate the educational and vocational needs of IT students in the context of continual rapid changes and developments in technology. The ACM have recognised the need for variation noting that: There are many effective ways to organize a curriculum even for a particular set of goals and objectives (Tucker et al., 1991, p.70). A possible major contribution to new knowledge of these papers relates to how high level abstract bandwidth (B-Node) models may contribute to the understanding of why and how computer and networking technology systems have developed over time. Because these models are de-coupled from the underlying technology, which is subject to rapid change, these models may help to future-proof student knowledge and understanding of the ongoing and future development of computer and networking systems. The de-coupling is achieved through abstraction based upon bandwidth or throughput rather than the specific implementation of the underlying technologies. One of the underlying problems is that computing systems tend to change faster than the ability of most educational institutions to respond. Abstraction and the use of B-Node models could help educational models to more quickly respond to changes in the field, and can also help to introduce an element of future-proofing in the education of IT students. The importance of abstraction has been noted by the ACM who state that: Levels of Abstraction: the nature and use of abstraction in computing; the use of abstraction in managing complexity, structuring systems, hiding details, and capturing recurring patterns; the ability to represent an entity or system by abstractions having different levels of detail and specificity (ACM, 1991b). Bloom et al note the importance of abstraction, listing under a heading of: “Knowledge of the universals and abstractions in a field” the objective: Knowledge of the major schemes and patterns by which phenomena and ideas arc organized. These are large structures, theories, and generalizations which dominate a subject or field or problems. These are the highest levels of abstraction and complexity\u27\u27 (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956, p. 203). Abstractions can be applied to computer and networking technology to help provide students with common fundamental concepts regardless of the particular underlying technological implementation to help avoid the rapid redundancy of a detailed knowledge of modem computer and networking technology implementation and hands-on skills acquisition. Again the ACM note that: “Enduring computing concepts include ideas that transcend any specific vendor, package or skill set... While skills are fleeting, fundamental concepts are enduring and provide long lasting benefits to students, critically important in a rapidly changing discipline (ACM, 2001, p.70) These abstractions can also be reinforced by experiential learning to commercial practices. In this context, the other possibly major contribution of new knowledge provided by this thesis is an efficient, scalable and flexible model for assessing hands-on skills and understanding of IT students. This is a form of Competency-Based Assessment (CBA), which has been successfully tested as part of this research and subsequently implemented at ECU. This is the first time within this field that this specific type of research has been undertaken within the university sector within Australia. Hands-on experience and understanding can become outdated hence the need for future proofing provided via B-Nodes models. The three major research questions of this study are: •Is it possible to develop a new, high level abstraction model for use in CNT education? •Is it possible to have CNT curricula that are more directly relevant to both student and employer expectations without suffering from rapid obsolescence? •Can WI effective, efficient and meaningful assessment be undertaken to test students\u27 hands-on skills and understandings? The ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SJGCOMM) workshop report on Computer Networking, Curriculum Designs and Educational Challenges, note a list of teaching approaches: ... the more \u27hands-on\u27 laboratory approach versus the more traditional in-class lecture-based approach; the bottom-up approach towards subject matter verus the top-down approach (Kurose, Leibeherr, Ostermann, & Ott-Boisseau, 2002, para 1). Bandwidth considerations are approached from the PC hardware level and at each of the seven layers of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model. It is believed that this research is of significance to computing education. However, further research is needed

A methodology of testing high-level Petri nets

Petri nets have been extensively used in the modelling and analysis of concurrent and distributed systems. The verification and validation of Petri nets are of particular importance in the development of concurrent and distributed systems. As a complement to formal analysis techniques, testing has been proven to be effective in detecting system errors and is easy to apply. An open problem is how to test Petri nets systematically, effectively and efficiently. An approach to solve this problem is to develop test criteria so that test adequacy can be measured objectively and test cases can be generated efficiently, even automatically. In this paper, we present a methodology of testing high-level Petri nets based on our general theory of testing concurrent software systems. Four types of testing strategies are investigated, which include state-oriented testing, transition-oriented testing, flow-oriented testing and specification-oriented testing. For each strategy, a set of schemes toobserve and record testing results and a set of coverage criteria to measure test adequacy are defined. The subsumption relationships and extraction relationships among the proposed testing methods are systematically investigated and formally proved

The Fifth NASA Symposium on VLSI Design

The fifth annual NASA Symposium on VLSI Design had 13 sessions including Radiation Effects, Architectures, Mixed Signal, Design Techniques, Fault Testing, Synthesis, Signal Processing, and other Featured Presentations. The symposium provides insights into developments in VLSI and digital systems which can be used to increase data systems performance. The presentations share insights into next generation advances that will serve as a basis for future VLSI design

Smart Urban Water Networks

This book presents the paper form of the Special Issue (SI) on Smart Urban Water Networks. The number and topics of the papers in the SI confirm the growing interest of operators and researchers for the new paradigm of smart networks, as part of the more general smart city. The SI showed that digital information and communication technology (ICT), with the implementation of smart meters and other digital devices, can significantly improve the modelling and the management of urban water networks, contributing to a radical transformation of the traditional paradigm of water utilities. The paper collection in this SI includes different crucial topics such as the reliability, resilience, and performance of water networks, innovative demand management, and the novel challenge of real-time control and operation, along with their implications for cyber-security. The SI collected fourteen papers that provide a wide perspective of solutions, trends, and challenges in the contest of smart urban water networks. Some solutions have already been implemented in pilot sites (i.e., for water network partitioning, cyber-security, and water demand disaggregation and forecasting), while further investigations are required for other methods, e.g., the data-driven approaches for real time control. In all cases, a new deal between academia, industry, and governments must be embraced to start the new era of smart urban water systems

Complete Model-Based Testing Applied to the Railway Domain

Testing is the most important verification technique to assert the correctness of an embedded system. Model-based testing (MBT) is a popular approach that generates test cases from models automatically. For the verification of safety-critical systems, complete MBT strategies are most promising. Complete testing strategies can guarantee that all errors of a certain kind are revealed by the generated test suite, given that the system-under-test fulfils several hypotheses. This work presents a complete testing strategy which is based on equivalence class abstraction. Using this approach, reactive systems, with a potentially infinite input domain but finitely many internal states, can be abstracted to finite-state machines. This allows for the generation of finite test suites providing completeness. However, for a system-under-test, it is hard to prove the validity of the hypotheses which justify the completeness of the applied testing strategy. Therefore, we experimentally evaluate the fault-detection capabilities of our equivalence class testing strategy in this work. We use a novel mutation-analysis strategy which introduces artificial errors to a SystemC model to mimic typical HW/SW integration errors. We provide experimental results that show the adequacy of our approach considering case studies from the railway domain (i.e., a speed-monitoring function and an interlocking-system controller) and from the automotive domain (i.e., an airbag controller). Furthermore, we present extensions to the equivalence class testing strategy. We show that a combination with randomisation and boundary-value selection is able to significantly increase the probability to detect HW/SW integration errors

Assuring Safety and Security

Large technological systems produce new capabilities that allow innovative solutions to social, engineering and environmental problems. This trend is especially important in the safety-critical systems (SCS) domain where we simultaneously aim to do more with the systems whilst reducing the harm they might cause. Even with the increased uncertainty created by these opportunities, SCS still need to be assured against safety and security risk and, in many cases, certified before use. A large number of approaches and standards have emerged, however there remain challenges related to technical risk such as identifying inter-domain risk interactions, developing safety-security causal models, and understanding the impact of new risk information. In addition, there are socio-technical challenges that undermine technical risk activities and act as a barrier to co-assurance, these include insufficient processes for risk acceptance, unclear responsibilities, and a lack of legal, regulatory and organisational structure to support safety-security alignment. A new approach is required. The Safety-Security Assurance Framework (SSAF) is proposed here as a candidate solution. SSAF is based on the new paradigm of independent co-assurance, that is, keeping the disciplines separate but having synchronisation points where required information is exchanged. SSAF is comprised of three parts - the Conceptual Model defines the underlying philosophy, and the Technical Risk Model (TRM) and Socio-Technical Model (STM) consist of processes and models for technical risk and socio-technical aspects of co-assurance. Findings from a partial evaluation of SSAF using case studies reveal that the approach has some utility in creating inter-domain relationship models and identifying socio-technical gaps for co-assurance. The original contribution to knowledge presented in this thesis is the novel approach to co-assurance that uses synchronisation points, explicit representation of a technical risk argument that argues over interaction risks, and a confidence argument that explicitly considers co-assurance socio-technical factors

Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995)

The files on this record represent the various databases that originally composed the CD-ROM issue of "Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding" database, which is now part of the Dudley Knox Library's Abstracts and Selected Full Text Documents on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995) Collection. (See Calhoun record https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/57364 for further information on this collection and the bibliography). Due to issues of technological obsolescence preventing current and future audiences from accessing the bibliography, DKL exported and converted into the three files on this record the various databases contained in the CD-ROM. The contents of these files are: 1) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_xls.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.xls: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format; RDFA_Glossary.xls: Glossary of terms, in Excel 97-2003 Workbookformat; RDFA_Biographies.xls: Biographies of leading figures, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format]; 2) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_csv.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.TXT: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in CSV format; RDFA_Glossary.TXT: Glossary of terms, in CSV format; RDFA_Biographies.TXT: Biographies of leading figures, in CSV format]; 3) RDFA_CompleteBibliography.pdf: A human readable display of the bibliographic data, as a means of double-checking any possible deviations due to conversion

1995 BRAC Commission

Naval Research Lab: Military Value Data Call. Tabular data, memos, documents. Box 178, L-110