Measuring the Affordances of Studying in a Virtual World

There has been much interest at the University of Hertfordshire in the teaching and learning in virtual worlds such as Second Life. The School of Computer Science has established a virtual campus within this system where a broad range of learning and teaching activities take place. These include presenting textual, audio and video learning and teaching materials, delivering virtual lectures, providing simulations and group working areas. Recently there has been a great deal of controversy over such initiatives, for example at my own university lecturers are divided as to the efficacy of such an approach. Some see the initiative as an interesting addition to the range of teaching and learning strategies available, likely to motivate learners. Others see it as a trivial attempt to jump on the latest band wagon, with little pedagogical benefit or justification. My own past research in this area, over several years has related to an estimation of the cognitive load imposed by desktop virtual environments and how this affected learning. Several important variables have been identified in several years of research and their effects measured. In the study presented here, a group of 80 final year computer science students used the Second Life virtual environment in order to support their practical project work. Groups of four learners used the university virtual campus especially modified for this purpose to hold meetings and to manage their software development projects. This study reports on how the group areas were established and used by the learners, the types of activities that took place and the effectiveness of the approach in this context. Quantitative and qualitative research was undertaken and it was found that there were benefits to be had by the use of such virtual environments. Recommendations are made as to the affordances of the Second Life virtual environment for teaching and learning in this context and also discussed are the potential problems inherent in this initiative related to individual differences and the cognitive burden imposed on learners.Peer reviewe

Self-Verification Of Public-Key Agreement Over Voip Using Random Fusion Scheme

Telefoni Internet, yang dikenali juga sebagai Suara melalui Protokol Internet (VoIP), menjadi salah satu alternatif telekomunikasi yang popular disebabkan penggunaan Internet yang semakin meluas. Internet memperkaya cara sistem telefoni digunakan, tetapi dalam masa yang sama menimbulkan pelbagai kebimbangan, terutamanya keselamatan Internet telephony, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), has become one of popular alternatives in telecommunication due to the widespread of the Internet usage. The Internet enriches the way of telephony system is used, but in the meantime it elevates many concerns, particularly security

GIS Application to Support Land Administration Services in Ghana: Institutional Factors and Software Developments

In June 1999, the Ghanaian Government launched a new land policy document that sought to address some fundamental problems associated with land administration and management in the country. The document identified the weak land administration system as a particular problem and recommended the introduction of computer-aided information systems in the ‘lands sector’. In 2001, the Government made further proposals to prepare and implement a Land Administration Programme (LAP) to provide a better platform for evolving an efficient land administration that would translate the ‘National Land Policy’ into action. Thus, an up-to-date land information system (LIS), supporting efficient management of land records, is to be constructed, which provides a context for the research reported in this paper. We document two aspects of our research on the adoption of GIS by the Lands Commission Secretariat (LCS) which form part of a pilot project in GIS diffusion. Part one of the paper mainly outlines the empirical results arising from fieldwork undertaken during 2001 to determine the information and GIS requirements of the LCS in relation to their routine administrative processes and to identify the critical factors that are required to ensure that any new GIS applications are successfully embraced. Part two explains the prototype software system developed using ArcView 3.2 and Access that provides the LCS with a means to automate some of the routine administrative tasks that they are required to fulfil. The software has been modified and upgraded following an initial evaluation by LCS employees also conducted as part of the fieldwork in Accra

Formative Evaluation of Job Clubs Operated by Faith- and Community-Based Organizations: Findings From Site Visits and Options for Future Evaluation

Over the past several decades, job search support groups, commonly referred to as “job clubs,” have evolved into one of several important activities used by the public workforce system and faith- and community-based organizations to enhance worker readiness and employability, as well as to provide ongoing support to unemployed and underemployed individuals as they search for jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor\u27s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted in September 2012 with Capital Research Corporation, Inc. and George Washington University to conduct an assessment of job clubs sponsored by faith-based and community-based organizations (FBOs/CBOs). The overall purpose of this evaluation effort was to systematically describe the key characteristics of job clubs being offered by a range of faith- and community- based organizations, document how they differ from and are similar to the job clubs operated by publicly-funded workforce agencies (such as at American Job Centers [AJCs]), and identify potential approaches that might be used for more rigorous formal evaluation of impacts and effectiveness. Findings from the telephone interviews with stakeholders and in-person interviews with facilitators during the site visits indicate that job clubs operated by FBOs, CBOs and public workforce agencies are alike in many ways, with all of them emphasizing the critical importance of: (1) networking during the job search; (2) offering ongoing peer support and sharing of similar experiences among participants; and (3) providing instruction and guidance on the basics of the job search process (e.g., elevator pitches, resume development, job interview practice). Noteworthy differences between the FBO/CBO job clubs and those operated by public workforce agencies are related to staffing patterns and available resources for program operations and services. While public workforce agency job clubs are led by paid professional staff, supported by the full complement of workshops, activities, and other services typically available through AJCs/One-Stop Centers, FBO/CBO job clubs, in most cases, operate with limited budgets or no funding whatsoever. Additionally, compared with public sector agencies, FBOs/CBOs typically collect little in the way of participant-level data, such as participant identifiers, demographic characteristics, service receipt, or outcomes. Finally, although this report suggests several approaches to future rigorous experimental/non-experimental and process/implementation evaluation of FBO/CBO-sponsored job clubs, there are likely to be formidable challenges to implementation of rigorous evaluation methods because these job clubs rarely collect identifying information on participants, such as Social Security numbers, and are generally opposed to random assignment for their programs

A modern approach for Threat Modelling in agile environments: redesigning the process in a SaaS company

Dealing with security aspects has become one of the priorities for companies operating in every sector. In the software industry building security requires being proactive and preventive by incorporating requirements right from the ideation and design of the product. Threat modelling has been consistently proven as one of the most effective and rewarding security activities in doing that, being able to uncover threats and vulnerabilities before they are even introduced into the codebase. Numerous approaches to conduct such exercise have been proposed over time, however, most of them can not be adopted in intricate corporate environments with multiple development teams. This is clear by analysing the case of Company Z, which introduced a well-documented process in 2019 but scalability, governance and knowledge issues blocked a widespread adoption. The main goal of the Thesis was to overcome these problems by designing a novel threat modelling approach, able to fit the company’s Agile environment and capable of closing the current gaps. As a result, a complete description of the redefined workflow and a structured set of suggestions was proposed. The solution is flexible enough to be adopted in multiple different contexts while meeting the requirements of Company Z. Achieving this result was possible only by analysing the industry’s best practices and solutions, understanding the current process, identifying the pain points, and gathering feedback from stakeholders. The solution proposed includes, alongside the new threat modelling process, a comprehensive method for evaluating and verifying the effectiveness of the proposed solution

Benchmarking the Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) for component authentication

Efforts to secure computing systems via software traditionally focus on the operating system and application levels. In contrast, the Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) tackles firmware level security challenges, which are much harder (if at all possible) to detect with regular protection software. SPDM includes key features like enabling peripheral authentication, authenticated hardware measurements retrieval, and secure session establishment. Since SPDM is a relatively recent proposal, there is a lack of studies evaluating its performance impact on real-world applications. In this article, we address this gap by: (1) implementing the protocol on a simple virtual device, and then investigating the overhead introduced by each SDPM message; and (2) creating an SPDM-capable virtual hard drive based on VirtIO, and comparing the resulting read/write performance with a regular, unsecured implementation. Our results suggest that SPDM bootstrap time takes the order of tens of milliseconds, while the toll of introducing SPDM on hard drive communication highly depends on specific workload patterns. For example, for mixed random read/write operations, the slowdown is negligible in comparison to the baseline unsecured setup. Conversely, for sequential read or write operations, the data encryption process becomes the bottleneck, reducing the performance indicators by several orders of magnitude.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Enabling Data-Driven Transportation Safety Improvements in Rural Alaska

Safety improvements require funding. A clear need must be demonstrated to secure funding. For transportation safety, data, especially data about past crashes, is the usual method of demonstrating need. However, in rural locations, such data is often not available, or is not in a form amenable to use in funding applications. This research aids rural entities, often federally recognized tribes and small villages acquire data needed for funding applications. Two aspects of work product are the development of a traffic counting application for an iPad or similar device, and a review of the data requirements of the major transportation funding agencies. The traffic-counting app, UAF Traffic, demonstrated its ability to count traffic and turning movements for cars and trucks, as well as ATVs, snow machines, pedestrians, bicycles, and dog sleds. The review of the major agencies demonstrated that all the likely funders would accept qualitative data and Road Safety Audits. However, quantitative data, if it was available, was helpful

Development Trend of Exhibition Industry of Wuhan in The E-commerce Environment

With the development of Web Economics, network exhibition came into being. Network and reality exhibition complement each other and develop together. New opportunities and challenges are promoting exhibition industry of Wuhan, which based on innovation, make full use of modern technology, electronic commerce and service, efforts to expand its geographical space and space. Exhibition industry of Wuhan should speed up the construction of virtual exhibition business platform, which is a unique design, complete functions, convenient operation platform and it is feasible