Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Sustainability of the chemical manufacturing industry - Towards a new paradigm?

This paper describes the current situation of the chemicalmanufacturingindustry, with special reference to Europe and looks to the future sustainability demands on the sector, and the implications of these demands for chemical engineering education. These implications include definitions of sustainability criteria for the sector and the need for transparent reporting under the Triple Bottom Line approach. The response of the education system to the sustainability agenda over the years and a number of strategies to incorporate it into courses are described. The important role of chemical (or more generally, process) engineers in delivering sustainable solutions is emphasised but this also suggests that anew way of thinking about the discipline is required. Indeed, this paper argues that the demand for a sustainable chemicalmanufacturing sector could bring about the next paradigm shift in the discipline which has been predicted for some time

Idea-caution before exploitation:the use of cybersecurity domain knowledge to educate software engineers against software vulnerabilities

The transfer of cybersecurity domain knowledge from security experts (‘Ethical Hackers’) to software engineers is discussed in terms of desirability and feasibility. Possible mechanisms for the transfer are critically examined. Software engineering methodologies do not make use of security domain knowledge in its form of vulnerability databases (e.g. CWE, CVE, Exploit DB), which are therefore not appropriate for this purpose. An approach based upon the improved use of pattern languages that encompasses security domain knowledge is proposed

Education in 'life cycle sustainability assessment': caring for all 3 P's in one

Starting from the observation that externalities, reflecting societal concerns, emerge from costs and benefits which are not reflected in the market price, the authors of the paper emphasize the importance in education of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) as a triple-bottom line tool to assess the three dimensions of sustainable development (environment, social and economy) – often referred to as the inclusive 3 P’s-approach (planet, people and profit) – of products, from cradle to grave. Especially the social LCA, as part of the overarching LCSA, has been developed to identify and to assess the social conditions throughout the life cycle of a product in order to improve human well-being. The concept of ‘social justice’ and its operationalization form the background for the development of different stakeholder categories, subcategories and indicators to undertake the social and socio-economic assessment. Two international publications (Benoît and Mazijn, 2009; Valdivia et al., 2011) are used during teaching and training session to give an overview of the social LCA and the LCSA. These guidance for the assessment of products resulted from inter- and multidisciplinary work. It was developed with the support of the authors, who have all an engineering background, but who worked for ten years now together, inter alia, with experts from social sciences. Different training sessions have been set up and LCSA (incl. social LCA) has been part of courses at universities, all with multiple objectives of a learning curve for engineering education within the context of sustainable development. Based on that experience in different countries, the authors are formulating recommendations for future educational material. Looking back at the Declaration of Barcelona (EESD 2004) and comparing with the objectives of the formal and non-formal education on LCSA, the authors claim that LCSA (and the on-going research) provides an excellent opportunity to fulfil the requirements of Engineering Education for Sustainable Development. Answering the question ‘What is a sustainable product?’ by using LCSA is learning to deal with complexity and uncertainty across the boundaries of a diversity of disciplines

Experiences in teaching grid computing to advanced level students

The development of teaching materials for future software engineers is critical to the long term success of the grid. At present however there is considerable turmoil in the grid community both within the standards and the technology base underpinning these standards. In this context, it is especially challenging to develop teaching materials that have some sort of lifetime beyond the next wave of grid middleware and standards. In addition, the current way in which grid security is supported and delivered has two key problems. Firstly in the case of the UK e-Science community, scalability issues arise from a central certificate authority. Secondly, the current security mechanisms used by the grid community are not line grained enough. In this paper we outline how these issues are being addressed through the development of a grid computing module supported by an advanced authorisation infrastructure at the University of Glasgow

Towards a Life Sciences Code: Countering the Threats from Biological Weapons

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CESEC Chair – Training Embedded System Architects for the Critical Systems Domain

Increasing complexity and interactions across scientific and tech- nological domains in the engineering of critical systems calls for new pedagogical approach. In this paper, we introduce the CESEC teaching chair. This chair aims at supporting new integrative ap- proach for the initial training of engineer and master curriculum to three engineering school in Toulouse: ISAE, INSA Toulouse and INP ENSEEIHT. It is supported by the EADS Corporate Foundation. In this paper, we highlight the rationale for this chair: need for sys- tem architect with strong foundations on technical domains appli- cable to the aerospace industry. We then introduce the ideal profile for this architect and the various pedagogical approaches imple- mented to reach this objective

The Design and Evaluation of an Interactive Social Engineering Training Programme

Social engineering is a major issue affecting organisational security. Educating employees on how to avoid social engineering attacks is important because social engineering tries to penetrate an organisation by using employees to grant authorized access to sensitive information. While there are a number of theoretical studies about social engineering, a few practical studies have moved towards educating and training employees on how to spot such attacks. In this research, we emphasise the importance of educating employees to make them more resilient to these kinds of attacks. We developed an educational video encapsulated within a Social Engineering Training Programme. This is essentially an interactive training video during which the learner interacts with three different scenarios; educational content, a knowledge-check, and a web page containing the latest news about current social engineering attacks. The training programme was evaluated in a Saudi trading company with 24 employees. The evaluation showed that the programme delivered a positive impact in terms of awareness, as tested by a post-training qui

Assessment of work-based reports: an analysis of assessment frameworks

In Britain engineering professional development has traditionally been seen as a three phase process consisting of a period of engineering formation, a period of training and a period during which engineering responsibilities are demonstrated. An individual could submit evidence of these activities and become registered as a Professional Engineer. Increasing numbers of people employed in the role of engineer do not have formal engineering qualifications and a part or all their engineering formation is carried out within engineering companies or organizations. These people therefore do not have the academically authenticated credentials to register as professional engineers but if they are ignored then the pool of registered engineers will cease to be representative of the profession. The Engineering Council, the body responsible for registering engineers in the UK, has acknowledged the changes in the structure of the profession and has introduced an alternative route for assessing the knowledge and understanding that underpins the competence of a professional engineer. Individual engineers can demonstrate that they have an adequate engineering formation through any combination of academic qualifications and a technical report on some aspect of their professional engineering work. The introduction of the technical report requires the Professional Engineering Bodies to carry out an assessment outside the traditional assessment framework of the Universities. This paper reviews and analyses the requirements of assessment systems and derives the components of such a system that will ensure that the results of the assessment of a work-based technical report will be respected and be seen as assuring comparable standards to the academic routes to engineering formation. By examining assessment separately from the processes of teaching and learning, the paper also reveals the extent of an assessment process and its costs