Early Developmental Activities and Computing Proficiency

As countries adopt computing education for all pupils from primary school upwards, there are challenging indicators: significant proportions of students who choose to study computing at universities fail the introductory courses, and the evidence for links between formal education outcomes and success in CS is limited. Yet, as we know, some students succeed without prior computing experience. Why is this? <br/><br/> Some argue for an innate ability, some for motivation, some for the discrepancies between the expectations of instructors and students, and some – simply – for how programming is being taught. All agree that becoming proficient in computing is not easy. Our research takes a novel view on the problem and argues that some of that success is influenced by early childhood experiences outside formal education. <br/><br/> In this study, we analyzed over 1300 responses to a multi-institutional and multi-national survey that we developed. The survey captures enjoyment of early developmental activities such as childhood toys, games and pastimes between the ages 0 — 8 as well as later life experiences with computing. We identify unifying features of the computing experiences in later life, and attempt to link these computing experiences to the childhood activities. <br/><br/> The analysis indicates that computing proficiency should be seen from multiple viewpoints, including both skill-level and confidence. It shows that particular early childhood experiences are linked to parts of computing proficiency, namely those related to confidence with problem solving using computing technology. These are essential building blocks for more complex use. We recognize issues in the experimental design that may prevent our data showing a link between early activities and more complex computing skills, and suggest adjustments. Ultimately, it is hoped that this line of research will feed in to early years and primary education, and thereby improve computing education for all

An Exploratory Investigation Into the Use of eAUP as an Alternative to Text-based Passwords

Security is one of the major concerns of every industry in the world today. One of the best ways of hacking into a computer system is brute forcing. And with the increase in computing, brute forcing has become faster and easy to do. Text-based passwords are still the most popular and most commonly used form of authentication even though the requirements for a good password are still increasing. Research has shown that the best text-based passwords are the random ones that have no sequence or pattern to them. But this also makes it difficult to remember. Well- documented research has shown that it is easier to remember an image than words, hence the adage A picture is worth a thousand words. Even though there are good policies for text-based passwords, the unpredictability of users\u27 attitudes and behavior has most of the time rendered these policies inefficient. The common trade-off for the complexity of text-based passwords is recallability. Most users would prefer to use a password they can easily remember than a complex one that they can easily forget. One of the proposed alternatives to text-based passwords is graphical passwords. There are several schemes that have been proposed but are still unpopular. This thesis investigated one of these schemes that are used on mobile devices to determine whether it can be used as an alternative to text-based passwords. Also this research proposes ways to improve this scheme and options of bringing it at par with the current minimum requirements of a good text-based password