Professionalising the IT industry: towards the creation of a professional association.

The main aim of the project is to develop a set of guidelines that will enable the current IT profession to evolve into one that can take its place along side the established professions in society today. At this stage of the research we will use a working definition of a profession as ‘a vocation in which a professed knowledge of some department of learning or science is used in its application to the affairs of others or in the practice of an art founded upon it’ (Oxford English Dictionary). This definition is endorsed by Carr-Saunders & Wilson (1964) who go on to further explain that ‘special competence acquired as a result of prolonged and specialised training, is the chief distinguishing characteristic of the professions’ and that ‘a profession can only be said to exist when there are bonds between practitioners, and these bonds can take but one shape – that of formal association’. By understanding the core elements of what constitutes a profession and learning from the workings of other professions, I will identify the differences and unique elements of the IT profession and what lessons can be learnt to help enhance the professional status of IT. The impact of the IT industry and the relationship with other professions will be taken into account in defining the professional model for IT. The main beneficiaries of the research will be those organisation and institutions interested in growing and cultivating the IT profession. The beneficiaries of the research will be: • Computer Societies There are many IT organisations working to represent the interest of IT professionals in each country. This research will help identify the differences between them and the elements of a professional body. It may well be that these organisations are the vehicle through which improvements can be made towards creating an IT profession. • IT Industry Companies (e.g. IBM) which have a vested interest in attracting, recruiting, motivating and retaining IT staff. It is also of key interest to them that their staff are well qualified, professional and works in an ethical manner. The increased attractiveness of IT as a career will benefit them while the improved standing of the profession within the society will help grow their business • Academic Institutions Academic Institutions play a key role in the development of the next generation of IT professionals and hence will benefit from any recommendations from this project that will improve the level of professionalism. These recommendations may be applicable to the designers of future IT educational material, structure and content. • The State and Regulatory Bodies All professionals operate within the boundaries conferred on them by the state and regulatory bodies. Throughout this research recommendations may be identified that suggest changes to the relationship between the State and IT Professional organisations. • IT Professionals Many of the changes required to improve the IT Profession come from the IT Professionals themselves. Its members must want to make the changes and be willing to take action to make the changes happen. How individual professionals act will have a big impact on the image of the profession as a whole. While developing the research proposal, I have had informal conversations with a number of stakeholders: • Colleagues and members of the IT profession. The general consensus was that the IT profession had grown very fast over the last 20 years and is probably now entering a maturing phase. There was a feeling that the timing is right now in defining the future shape of the profession. • IT recruitment. The sharp decline in the number of IT students selecting IT as university courses is a concern for most societies. The apparent contradiction of skills shortages and lack of interest in IT needs to be addressed. It was felt that the unstructured nature of the profession coupled with poor image problems contributes to the decline of interest in IT. A strong professional body for IT would help address this. • IBM Management Like the rest of the IT industry, IBM is facing the same challenges of recruiting, retaining and motivating IT staff. This project is in support of IBM’s interest and other initiatives in this area. • Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) CEPIS is an umbrella organisation representing Computer Societies in the majority of European counties. Following discussions with senior officers of this organisation they confirmed that they had identified the area of professionalism within the IT industry as one of their top focus areas. They were excited about my area of research and offered their endorsement when contacting the various Computer Societies. In general, there was consensus regarding the aims of the project and its timing from the main interested stakeholders of this research

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

On the genesis of computer forensis

This thesis presents a coherent set of research contributions to the new discipline of computer forensis. It analyses emergence of computer forensis and defines challenges facing this discipline, carries forward research advances in conventional methodology, introduces novel approach to using virtual environments in forensis, and systemises the computer forensis body of knowledge leading to the establishment of tertiary curriculum. The emergence of computer forensis as a separate discipline of science was triggered by evolution and growth of computer crime. Computer technology reached a stage when a conventional, mechanistic approach to collecting and analysing data is insufficient: the existing methodology must be formalised, and embrace technologies and methods that will enable the inclusion of transient data and live systems analysis. Further work is crucial to incorporate advances in related disciplines like computer security and information systems audit, as well as developments in operating systems to make computer forensics issues inherent in their design. For example: it is proposed that some of the features offered by persistent systems could be built into conventional operating systems to make illicit activities easier to identify and analyse. The analysis of permanent data storage is fundamental to computer forensics practice. There is very little finalised, and a lot still to be discovered in the conventional computer forensics methodology. This thesis contributes to formalisation and improved integrity of forensic handling of data storage by: formalising methods for data collection and analysis in NTFS (Microsoft file system) environment: presenting safe methodology for handling data backups in order to avoid information loss where Alternate Data Streams (ADS) are present: formalising methods of hiding and extracting hidden and encrypted data. A significant contribution of this thesis is in the field of application of virtualisation, or simulation of the computer in the virtual environment created by the underlying hardware and software, to computer forensics practice. Computer systems are not easily analysed for forensic purpose, and it is demonstrated that virtualisation applied in computer forensics allows for more efficient and accurate identification and analysis of the evidence. A new method is proposed where two environments used in parallel can bring faster and verifiable results not dependent on proprietary, close source tools and may lead to gradual shift from commercial Windows software to open source software (OSS). The final contribution of this thesis is systemising the body of knowledge in computer forensics, which is a necessary condition for it to become an established discipline of science. This systemisation led to design and development of tertiary curriculum in computer forensics illustrated here with a case study of computer forensics major for Bachelor of Computer Science at University of Western Sydney. All genesis starts as an idea. A natural part of scientific research process is replacing previous assumptions, concepts, and practices with new ones which better approximate the truth. This thesis advances computer forensis body of knowledge in the areas which are crucial to further development of this discipline. Please note that the appendices to this thesis consist of separately published items which cannot be made available due to copyright restrictions. These items are listed in the PDF attachment for reference purposes

Doing pedagogical research in engineering

This is a book

Unfolding the drivers for academic success: The case of ISCTE-IUL

Predicting the success of academic students is a major topic in the higher education research community. This study presents a data mining approach to predict academic success in a Portuguese University called ISCTE-IUL, unveiling the features that better explain failures. A dataset of 10 curricular years for bachelor’s degrees has been analysed. Features’ selection resulted in a characterising set of 68 features, encompassing socio-demographic, social origin, previous education, special statutes and educational path information. Understanding features’ collection timings, distinct predicting was conducted. Based on entrance date, end of the first and the second curricular semesters, three distinct data models were proposed and tested. An additional model was designed for outlier degrees (i.e., a 4-year Bachelor). Six algorithms were tested for modelling. A support vector machines (SVM) model achieved the best overall performance and was selected to conduct a data-based sensitivity analysis. Relevance and impact review allowed extracting meaningful knowledge. This approach unfolded that previous evaluation performance, study gaps and age-related features play a major role in explaining failures at entrance stage. For subsequent stages, current evaluation performance features unveil their predicting power. Also, it should be noted that most of the features’ groups are represented on each model’s most relevant features, revealing that academic success is a combination of a wide range of distinct factors. These and many other findings, such as, age-related features increasing impact at the end first curricular semester, set a baseline for success improvement recommendations, and for easier data mining adoption by Higher Education institutions. Suggested guidelines include to provide study support groups to risk profiles and to create monitoring frameworks. From a practical standpoint, a data-driven decision-making framework based on these models can be used to promote academic success.O sucesso académico é um dos tópicos mais explorados nos estudos sobre o ensino superior. Este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem de data mining para a previsão do sucesso académico no ISCTE-IUL. Numa abordagem focada no insucesso, são estudados os fatores que explicam estes casos. Neste estudo foram utilizados dados de licenciatura de 10 anos curriculares. Foram analisadas 68 características sociodemográficas, origem social, percurso escolar anterior (ensino secundário), estatutos especiais e percurso académico. Foram adotados diferentes vetores de análise para o primeiro ano curricular (entrada e final dos primeiro e segundo semestres curriculares), dando origem a 3 modelos distintos. Um modelo suplementar foi projetado para cursos especiais. Entre os seis algoritmos de modelação testados, SVM obteve a melhor performance, sendo utilizado para a análise de sensibilidade. O processo de extração de conhecimento indicou que fatores como desempenho anterior, interrupções do percurso educacional e idade, demonstram grande impacto no (in)sucesso num estágio inicial. Nos estágios seguintes, fatores de performance atuais revelam um grande poder de previsão do (in)sucesso. A maior parte dos grupos de características faz-se representar, nas características mais relevantes de cada modelo. Estes e outros resultados, como o aumento do impacto dos fatores relacionadas com a idade no final do segundo semestre curricular, suportam a criação de recomendações institucionais. Por exemplo, criar grupos de apoio ao estudo para perfis de risco e criar ferramentas de monitorização são algumas das diretrizes sugeridas. Em suma, é possível criar uma ferramenta de apoio à decisão, baseada nos modelos apresentados, podendo ser utilizada pelo ISCTE-IUL para promover o sucesso académico