Utilizing a Virtual Internet Testbed and Private Cloud to Teach Organizational Cloud Integration

Cloud based technologies have steadily diffused into corporations, and even while educational institutions have adopted such resources to improve student experiences, little has been done to educate students on how such services are integrated into an organization. We posit that it is vital to enhance the ability of IS professionals in training to perform successfully in post academic environments that utilize cloud technologies. Unfortunately, the very nature of cloud technology requires public IP’s, DNS servers to route to external cloud resources, organizational credentials, and more. To minimize organizational overhead, we use a private cloud, existing within an Internet-Scale Event and Attack Generation Environment (ISEAGE) testbed, to mimic real-world processes required for deployment of these services. This, compared via post and pretest surveys, will be directly compared to more traditional deployment methods to view any statistical differences in the pedagogical efficacy of such an environment

Best of Both Worlds: The Inclusion of Gamification in Virtual Lab Environments to Increase Educational Value

Previous research investigating gamification and virtual laboratories has suggested that both are successful in educational outcomes, but few have looked at both gamification and virtual labs in tandem. This research explores the idea of investigating both contexts within one unified platform. We examine whether using gamification within virtual labs is effective in enhancing learners’ educational performance. Particularly, we employ leaderboards as a motivational gamification mechanism for more engagement and participation that can result in higher learning outcomes. Using a sample of students, our results show that utilization of gamification within a virtual lab environment causes students to exhibit higher performance in terms of more task accomplishments (specifically more complex tasks) and higher self-efficacy. The current findings show promising evidence on the positive influence of gamification within virtual lab learning environments

Theory of Planned Behavior and the Influence of Communication Self-Efficacy on Intention to Pursue a Software Development Career

In modern software development, communication is one of the key success factors in software project development and team performance. However, software engineering (SE) students and educators may not have fully considered its significance in comparison to technical skills. The objective of the study was to determine the influence of communication self-efficacy and factors related to the theory of planned behavior (TPB) on the intention to pursue a career in software development. A survey was used to collect data from senior SE students at six universities in Thailand. The partial least squares – structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that attitudes toward software development careers and communication self-efficacy for software development had a positive influence on the students’ intention to pursue a career in software development. This study is the first attempt to investigate how communication self-efficacy in software development affects intention to work in a software development career. Educators can use the findings to improve curricula to foster students’ communication self-efficacy and encourage them to pursue a software development career

Computing education theories : what are they and how are they used?

In order to mature as a research field, computing education research (CER) seeks to build a better theoretical understanding of how students learn computing concepts and processes. Progress in this area depends on the development of computing-specific theories of learning to complement the general theoretical understanding of learning processes. In this paper we analyze the CER literature in three central publication venues -- ICER, ACM Transactions of Computing Education, and Computer Science Education -- over the period 2005--2015. Our findings identify new theoretical constructs of learning computing that have been published, and the research approaches that have been used in formulating these constructs. We identify 65 novel theoretical constructs in areas such as learning/understanding, learning behaviour/strategies, study choice/orientation, and performance/progression/retention. The most common research methods used to devise new constructs include grounded theory, phenomenography, and various statistical models. We further analyze how a number of these constructs, which arose in computing education, have been used in subsequent research, and present several examples to illustrate how theoretical constructs can guide and enrich further research. We discuss the implications for the whole field

Teaching Tip: Hackalytics: Using Computer Hacking to Engage Students in Analytics

The demand for qualified analytics professionals remains high with forecasts showing a continued need over the next few years. While this demand necessitates instruction in analytics in the classroom, many students find analytics concepts to be complicated and boring. This teaching brief describes a novel approach to teaching analytics through computer hacking. Students are exposed to the entire data lifecycle by first collecting intrusion detection data through the hacking of other student machines and then utilizing simple analytics procedures to analyze this data. Qualitative results show that the students enjoy the activity both in terms of the fun of hacking their fellow classmates as well as analyzing this data in an area less utilized in analytics instruction – security analytics. Three levels of the exercise are provided as well as how-to materials for students to run the exercise

Using Virtual Laboratories to Teach Realistic Hands-On IoT Training in Remote Settings

With an excess of interconnected devices, Internet of things (IoT) technologies offer an exciting area for information systems researchers; however, the inherently physical nature of IoT makes it difficult to provide hands-on laboratory exercises to remote students. Research suggests that enactive mastery provides the greatest educational improvement to individual self-efficacy, yet not all enactive experiences are the same, certainly not when individuals have no means of accessing materials physically. Through the use of a virtual laboratory and home automation IoT technology, we develop a method to teach IoT in remote settings where students can experience hands-on IoT training in remote settings. We experimentally evaluate the virtual laboratory by comparing student outcomes in a traditional setting using physical materials to those using the virtual laboratory. Results indicate that while student perceptions were lower for students using the virtual laboratory, this virtual laboratory was successful in offering students the means to perform hands-on IoT automation, with these students achieving equivalent performance metrics to those utilizing a traditional physical laboratory

Inclusion of Gamification Elements in the Context of Virtual Lab Environments to Increase Educational Value

Previous research on gamification and virtual laboratories has suggested that both produce successful educational outcomes, but few studies have looked at both gamification and virtual labs in tandem. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we investigate gamification in the virtual labs’ context to examine whether learners’ educational performance is enhanced. In particular, we employ leaderboards as a motivational gamification mechanism for more engagement and participation that can result in higher learning outcomes. Using a student sample, our results show that using gamification within a virtual lab environment results in higher student performance; specifically, it helps them complete more-complex tasks and increases their self-efficacy. Our findings show promising evidence that gamification in virtual lab learning environments positively influences learning

Individual Determinants of IT Occupational Outcomes

Extant research in information systems relies heavily on career anchor theory (CAS) as a lens to examine occupational choices and outcomes in information technology. Yet, the empirical results are inconclusive, and the power of the theory in predicting IT occupations is rather weak. With the growing demand for IT professionals, we need to examine other factors that can predict the IT occupational outcomes. In this paper, we draw on social cognitive career theory (SCCT) and examine self-efficacy as a complementary factor to career anchors in predicting whether seekers end up with technical, business, or managerial occupations in IT. Specifically, we propose and test a model that combines variables from both CAS and SCCT theories. We use multiple discriminant analysis to measure the extent to which variables from both theories discriminate the IT occupations. The results show that our model predicts occupations with an accuracy rate of 82.2 percent (compared to 75.2 percent for the original CAS model). Our results also show that individuals who hold a professional role that matches their profile are more satisfied than those who do not. Lastly, we discovered that, from individuals who hold a position that does not match their profile, business-IT professionals are most satisfied