MOTIVATING BUSINESS MAJOR STUDENTS TO LEARN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING – A CASE STUDY

Learning to program is viewed as difficult by many students. How to motivate and engage business major students to learn programming is challenging. In this paper, we report our attempt to teach business students programming. In our teaching method, first we orient students with the business and managerial aspect of programming by posing six original questions. By discussing these six questions, students gain appreciation of the high level responsibility of participating, contributing, assessing, and managing Information Systems (IS) as business professionals. Second, we adopt a Let Us Do It Together approach to deliver hands on labs to teach the technical aspect of programming. Inspired by the constructivism learning theory and the learning by doing and experimentation idea, our Let Us Do It Together approach mitigates students’ anxiety and fear of programming. Overall, our teaching approach seems to enhance students’ interest in programming

Analysis of Simple Accounting Systems using Information Technology in Fashion

This research aims to provide an example or illustration of how to apply a simple accounting system, namely Microsoft Excel in a fashion business that has just been started and has not used an application or system to do the recording. This research used a literature study method. The results of this study are expected for business beginners, especially fashion businesses, to understand how recording and bookkeeping in accounting are created using a simple accounting application. By displaying steps on how to make general journals, ledgers, adjustment entries, profit, and loss in Microsoft Excel. Therefore, it can be concluded that how important it is to make recording and bookkeeping using a simple application system method so that it can be easily applied by fashion business people who have just entered the business field

Development of an autonomous distributed multiagent monitoring system for the automatic classification of end users

The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of constructing a software Multi-Agent based monitoring and classification system and utilizing it to provide an automated and accurate classification for end users developing applications in the spreadsheet domain. Resulting in, is the creation of the Multi-Agent Classification System (MACS). The Microsoft‘s .NET Windows Service based agents were utilized to develop the Monitoring Agents of MACS. These agents function autonomously to provide continuous and periodic monitoring of spreadsheet workbooks by content. .NET Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services technology was used together with the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach for the distribution of the agents over the World Wide Web in order to satisfy the monitoring and classification of the multiple developer aspect. The Prometheus agent oriented design methodology and its accompanying Prometheus Design Tool (PDT) was employed for specifying and designing the agents of MACS, and Visual Studio.NET 2008 for creating the agency using visual C# programming language. MACS was evaluated against classification criteria from the literature with the support of using real-time data collected from a target group of excel spreadsheet developers over a network. The Monitoring Agents were configured to execute automatically, without any user intervention as windows service processes in the .NET web server application of the system. These distributed agents listen to and read the contents of excel spreadsheets development activities in terms of file and author properties, function and formulas used, and Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macro code constructs. Data gathered by the Monitoring Agents from various resources over a period of time was collected and filtered by a Database Updater Agent residing in the .NET client application of the system. This agent then transfers and stores the data in Oracle server database via Oracle stored procedures for further processing that leads to the classification of the end user developers. Oracle data mining classification algorithms: Naive Bayes, Adaptive Naive Bayes, Decision Trees, and Support Vector Machine were utilized to analyse the results from the data gathering process in order to automate the classification of excel spreadsheet developers. The accuracy of the predictions achieved by the models was compared. The results of the comparison showed that Naive Bayes classifier achieved the best results with accuracy of 0.978. Therefore, the MACS can be utilized to provide a Multi-Agent based automated classification solution to spreadsheet developers with a high degree of accuracy

A tool to measure engineering students' design strategies and abilities

Malaysia is moving from service-based industries to knowledge-based industries to achieve Vision 2020. This is also in line with innovation-led economy and globalization. Hence, there is a pressing need to transform the current engineering education system to meet the ever-growing roles and responsibilities of contemporary engineers. Design is central to engineering activity because students can apply the theoretical knowledge into practice. Students' engineering design knowledge and abilities are unknown when they enroll into the engineering programs. These engineering programs are either too low or too advanced for the students' design abilities. Hence, dropout rates in the engineering programs escalate each year. The invention is an online questionnaire which will assist in determining students' engineering design knowledge and abilities. It will guide engineering faculties in identifying suitable candidates for their engineering program through the scores obtained by the students. The scores will determine the students' level of engineering design knowledge. This will function as a mechanism for the faculties to filter the candidates' knowledge of engineering design and reduce the number of dropouts from the engineering program

Economic indicators used for EU projects, in other criteria of aggregation than national / regional

Economical and social indicators are created and published for national and regional dimensions. Nowadays, both local and territorial indicators are really able to define more adequate the stage of social and economical development and to illustrate the impact of European programs and projects in fields like: long lasting development, entrepreneurial development, scientific research development and strategies, education and learning resources, IT resources, dissemination of European culture etc. If in the first part, there is only quantitative information, offered by our National Institute of Statistics (NIS), in the following few examples of some useful economical and social indicators provide a dynamic vision in defining objectives, methods and implementation Thus the need for a quantitative framework of local and territorial indicators demands for an original statistical methodology.gross domestic product, indicators in macro, mezo and micro economics, weight of selected, factors, representative methodology

Competências dos profissionais contábeis necessárias para atuação na área de custos

O desenvolvimento das competências necessárias ao profissional contábil para atuação na área de custos é de extrema importância para garantir sua eficácia e sucesso nesse campo. A contabilidade de custos requer um conjunto específico de habilidades técnicas e comportamentais, incluindo conhecimento sólido em métodos de custeio, análise de dados financeiros, sistemas de informação, além de habilidades de comunicação, pensamento crítico e trabalho em equipe. O objetivo geral deste trabalho é analisar as competências profissionais de custos necessárias ao profissional contábil para atuação na área de custos. Para atingir tal objetivo, o trabalho foi dividido em três etapas. Na primeira, o objetivo foi identificar os conceitos, as abordagens e as competências que envolvem o ensino de custos, mediante uma revisão sistemática da literatura com base em artigos científicos, que, após categorizada conforme Bardin (2007), teve os dados tratados por meio de uma análise de conteúdo realizada com auxílio do software Excel e que resultou na identificação da importância do contador e do estudo de custos no universo contábil acadêmico e empresarial. Além disso, esta etapa permitiu identificar novas metodologias abordadas nos estudos sobre o ensino de custos, bem como verificar uma agenda de pesquisas futuras. A segunda etapa da pesquisa teve como objetivo identificar a percepção da academia sobre os conceitos necessários para atuação com custos. Para tanto, utilizou-se uma pesquisa documental e uma pesquisa Delphi aplicada a professores da área de custos em três rodadas, que teve sua eficiência validada pelo teste de W de Kendall e resultou em um mapa de conteúdos que apresenta a ordem identificada pelos professores para o ensino de custos de acordo com as principais literatura da área. Por fim, a terceira etapa teve como objetivo identificar a percepção do mercado sobre as competências necessárias para atuação com custos e, para tanto, foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura baseada em artigos científicos e uma pesquisa Delphi aplicada a profissionais da área de custos em três rodadas, da qual resultou um mapa de competências baseado na visão dos profissionais, o qual teve um alto índice de concordância e possibilitou a visualização das principais competências almejadas pelo mercado em ordem de prioridade. A pergunta central que norteia o presente estudo (quais as competências profissionais de custos necessárias ao profissional contábil?) foi respondida ao longo das três etapas, demonstrando que o alinhamento dos conteúdos ensinados na academia com as competências exigidas pelo mercado de trabalho é fundamental para preparar os profissionais contábeis que desejam atuar na área de custos. A relação efetiva entre academia e mercado de trabalho permite que os estudantes desenvolvam as competências técnicas e comportamentais necessárias, como conhecimento sobre métodos de custeio e sistemas de informação, pensamento crítico, habilidades de comunicação e trabalho em equipe. Dessa forma, os profissionais contábeis estarão melhor preparados para aplicar os conceitos aprendidos na academia e contribuir de forma eficaz para as organizações na área de custos. Ao compreender as necessidades e demandas do mercado de trabalho, a academia pode adaptar seus programas educacionais e currículos, garantindo que os graduandos estejam adequadamente preparados para as exigências do setor de contabilidade de custos. Além disso, essa pesquisa contribui para fortalecer a relação entre academia e mercado, promovendo integração entre teoria e prática e incentivando a formação de profissionais contábeis mais qualificados e prontos para enfrentar os desafios do campo de custos. Essa contribuição é fundamental para o desenvolvimento de uma educação contábil de qualidade e para o crescimento da área de contabilidade de custos como um todo. Por fim, sobre as sugestões de estudos futuros gerais da pesquisa, é possível identificar a oportunidade de replicar o presente trabalho em outras disciplinas na área de contabilidade ou gestão.For accountants working in cost accounting, it is of the utmost importance to develop the necessary competencies to ensure efficiency and success in the field. Cost accounting requires a specific set of technical and behavioral skills, such as having solid knowledge in costing methods, financial data analysis, and information systems, as well as being capable communicators, critical thinkers, and team players. As such, the general goal of this work is to analyze the professional competencies needed by accountants who work in cost accounting. To reach the proposed goal, this work has been divided in three phases: in the first phase, our goal was to identify concepts, approaches, and competencies relevant to cost accounting courses. We conducted a systematic literature review of scientific papers, categorized following the methods defined by Bardin (2007), and performed a content analysis using the Microsoft Excel software. With these, we identified the importance of accountants and studies in cost accounting for both the academic and business settings. This phase also identified new teaching methods used for cost accounting and assessed an investigation agenda for future research. The second phase aimed to identify the academic viewpoint regarding the necessary concepts for cost accounting practice. For this purpose, we performed a document analysis and three-round Delphi study aimed at cost accounting professors. These studies had their efficacy validated by Kendall's W test and resulted in a content map outlining the order of academic courses in cost accounting as identified by professors, corroborated by key literature in the field. The third and final phase intended to identify the market viewpoint regarding necessary competencies for cost accounting practice. As such, we conducted a systematic literature review of scientific papers, as well as a three-round Delphi study with cost accountants, which produced a competency map from the viewpoint of professionals. This map has a high coefficient of agreement and enabled a ranked outlook at the main competencies demanded by the market. The central guiding question of this study, "what professional competencies in cost accounting are essential for accountants?", was answered over the three phases, establishing that it is fundamental to closely align the contents taught at educational institutions with the competencies demanded by the market in order to empower accountants desiring to work in cost accounting. An efficient connection between academia and the business market allows students to develop the necessary technical and behavioral competencies, such as knowledge of costing methods and information systems, critical thought, and communication and teamwork skills. As such, accountants will be more well-prepared to apply concepts acquired in academia and to contribute more effectively with organizations in cost accounting. By understanding the needs of the work market, academia may adapt its educational programs and course outlines, ensuring that graduates are adequately prepared for the exigencies of cost accounting. Beyond that, this research contributes to strengthen the link between academia and the market, promoting the integration between theory and practice, and incentivizing the certification of more wellqualified accountants, prepared to face the challenges presented by the area of cost accounting. This contribution is essential to develop quality accounting education and to expand the field of cost accounting as a whole. Lastly, regarding suggestions for future research, we identified the opportunity to repeat this work in other fields of accounting and management

Economic indicators used for EU projects, in other criteria of aggregation than national / regional

Economical and social indicators are created and published for national and regional dimensions. Nowadays, both local and territorial indicators are really able to define more adequate the stage of social and economical development and to illustrate the impact of European programs and projects in fields like: long lasting development, entrepreneurial development, scientific research development and strategies, education and learning resources, IT resources, dissemination of European culture etc. If in the first part, there is only quantitative information, offered by our National Institute of Statistics (NIS), in the following few examples of some useful economical and social indicators provide a dynamic vision in defining objectives, methods and implementation Thus the need for a quantitative framework of local and territorial indicators demands for an original statistical methodology

Economic indicators used for EU projects, in other criteria of aggregation than national / regional

Economical and social indicators are created and published for national and regional dimensions. Nowadays, both local and territorial indicators are really able to define more adequate the stage of social and economical development and to illustrate the impact of European programs and projects in fields like: long lasting development, entrepreneurial development, scientific research development and strategies, education and learning resources, IT resources, dissemination of European culture etc. If in the first part, there is only quantitative information, offered by our National Institute of Statistics (NIS), in the following few examples of some useful economical and social indicators provide a dynamic vision in defining objectives, methods and implementation Thus the need for a quantitative framework of local and territorial indicators demands for an original statistical methodology

Advanced Technology for Engineering Education

This document contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Advanced Technology for Engineering Education, held at the Peninsula Graduate Engineering Center, Hampton, Virginia, February 24-25, 1998. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the University of Virginia's Center for Advanced Computational Technology and NASA. Workshop attendees came from NASA, other government agencies, industry and universities. The objectives of the workshop were to assess the status of advanced technologies for engineering education and to explore the possibility of forming a consortium of interested individuals/universities for curriculum reform and development using advanced technologies. The presentations covered novel delivery systems and several implementations of new technologies for engineering education. Certain materials and products are identified in this publication in order to specify adequately the materials and products that were investigated in the research effort. In no case does such identification imply recommendation or endorsement of products by NASA, nor does it imply that the materials and products are the only ones or the best ones available for this purpose. In many cases equivalent materials and products are available and would probably produce equivalent results