Higher Education Research in Scotland: Report of a Survey Undertaken by Universities Scotland Educational Development Sub-Committee

The aim of this study was to gain an insight into a range of higher educational research taking place across Scotland with a particular focus on the nature, expertise, support and dissemination of this research. For the purposes of this study, we used the term ‘research into higher education’ to refer to a range of higher educational research activity that included: research into higher education policies and practice, pedagogical research, research into learning and teaching taking place in higher education and research about transition from further education or school into higher education. The findings point to the underground nature of pedagogic research taking place in Scotland. Many researchers are based within disciplines and their pedagogic research is disseminated in a variety of settings that do not always make it easily accessible within generic higher education research discourse. Pedagogic research is also apparently undervalued, with many academic staff experiencing pressure to prioritise publishing within their main discipline over and above pedagogic research. In addition there appears to be a lack of capacity within Scottish institutions to maximise the profile of higher educational research in the forthcoming UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise

Refining the PoinTER “human firewall” pentesting framework

PurposePenetration tests have become a valuable tool in the cyber security defence strategy, in terms of detecting vulnerabilities. Although penetration testing has traditionally focused on technical aspects, the field has started to realise the importance of the human in the organisation, and the need to ensure that humans are resistant to cyber-attacks. To achieve this, some organisations “pentest” their employees, testing their resilience and ability to detect and repel human-targeted attacks. In a previous paper we reported on PoinTER (Prepare TEst Remediate), a human pentesting framework, tailored to the needs of SMEs. In this paper, we propose improvements to refine our framework. The improvements are based on a derived set of ethical principles that have been subjected to ethical scrutiny.MethodologyWe conducted a systematic literature review of academic research, a review of actual hacker techniques, industry recommendations and official body advice related to social engineering techniques. To meet our requirements to have an ethical human pentesting framework, we compiled a list of ethical principles from the research literature which we used to filter out techniques deemed unethical.FindingsDrawing on social engineering techniques from academic research, reported by the hacker community, industry recommendations and official body advice and subjecting each technique to ethical inspection, using a comprehensive list of ethical principles, we propose the refined GDPR compliant and privacy respecting PoinTER Framework. The list of ethical principles, we suggest, could also inform ethical technical pentests.OriginalityPrevious work has considered penetration testing humans, but few have produced a comprehensive framework such as PoinTER. PoinTER has been rigorously derived from multiple sources and ethically scrutinised through inspection, using a comprehensive list of ethical principles derived from the research literature

Healthy Ageing in Smart Villages? Observations from the Field

In the context of demographically ageing communities across rural Europe Smart Villages have considerable potential to promote ageing healthy. Whilst in principle supporting healthy ageing in the context of the Smart Village might appear a relatively straightforward endeavour, in operational terms, successful development of smart, 21st century villages relies upon, and sometimes assumes, an appropriate interplay of socio-technological factors. Articulated through a lens provided by the digital ecosystem model advocated by the European Network for Rural Development (2018), this paper offers some observations from the field. We acknowledge the challenges faced by remote rural places in their journey to become ‘smart places’ and identify formal and informal interventions that could better position rural communities to become part of a wider, smart society

Garis panduan pembangunan media pengajaran berkonsepkan penceritaan digital untuk tablet skrin sentuh

The usage of the Digital Storytelling (DST) concept for development process in instructional media is not fully comprehended. Besides, the features of DST tools also need to be identified. The lack of standard guidelines to develop instructional media with touch screen interaction should also be addressed. Therefore, this study proposes a guideline for the development of instructional media with DST concept (MPBPD) for touch screen tablet that could help designers to produce compelling MPBPD apps. This study applies the Design Science Methodology to achieve the objectives of the study that comprises of five phases: problem awareness, suggestion, development, evaluation and conclusion. A total of 13 experts and 70 teachers from the Institut Pendidikan Guru (IPG) and a school in the Northern Region, Malaysia participated in the quality evaluation phase using a set of questionnaire called Q-Qguide. Furthermore, 40 MPBPD apps created by the respondents were measured in terms of compellingness using a rubric instrument (R-Compelling). The findings indicate that the guideline is of quality and has positive and high relationship in the dimension of usefulness, ease of use, easy to understand, applicability and tablet interaction. MPBPD apps which were developed by implementing the guideline is found to meet the guideline elements and has a high perceived compellingness level. In conclusion, the study has contributed a guideline for the development of instructional media with DST concept for touch screen table

Interactive visualisation for low literacy users

Sixteen percent (5.2 million) of the UK population possess low levels of literacy. The Government and other non-profit organisations, due to funding reforms, are forced to reduce the provision of face-to-face advice, and therefore, are pushing advice services via telephone or internet. As a consequence, low literacy users are experiencing difficulties finding the information they need to solve their day to day problems online. This thesis evaluates how walk in clients of a local Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) who come to get social service information, obtain information online using the Adviceguide website. The thesis presents two challenges: (i) knowing the users in a way that can help consider design solutions that are probably not in a typical designer’s standard repertoire of design patterns, and (ii) knowing what is the problem that needs to be addressed. It is not simply an issue of usability or the need for simpler language, but understanding that these low literacy users are very different from the high literacy users. These low literacy users need this information to solve their day-to-day problems and are likely to be less successful in doing so. By providing an information architecture that permits them of a reasoning space and context, while supporting less abstract skills by visualized information in an unconventional way. The above challenges leave us with these research questions to address: what is the basis of such a design, how can these designs be incorporated into existing non-traditional interface proof of concept and finally how can these designs be evaluated