The Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library

The Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library (NCSTRL) is a distributed digital library of research results from computer science departments and laboratories in the USA and abroad. NCSTRL benefits readers, authors, and departments. Researchers throughout the world can use familiar Internet tools (the World Wide Web) to search for, browse, read, and download technical reports from participating institutions. Authors benefit by reaching a wider audience. Departments gain a clean, effective management system for distributing their technical reports and eliminate much of their current copying and mailing charges. This article describes the design of NCSTRL, its historical basis in earlier work, and the expected course of the development

Factors that Influence Successful Online Teaching and Learning Programs in Technical Computer Science Subjects

Since the mid to late 1990s, the World Wide Web has been used as a distributed learning mechanism, enhancing the digital learning environment to support distance and on-campus students. Web technology has been adopted to assist learners with real-time studying at a distance. Consequently, Web delivery has grown rapidly and has been used as a vehicle for learning. Many universities have developed wholly online distance education programs. These changes in distance education have been developed in an attempt to provide easier access to educational opportunities for students who are located remotely from the university, who are working or who have other constraints/commitments such as family commitments. However, online distance learning in Computer Science courses remains challenging for both instructors and students. Research has shown that there is a significant risk factor for online courses in Computer Science. Course developers and instructors need to be aware of the particular needs of Computer Science students when establishing online courses, if they wish to graduate successful and satisfied students. This is particularly true in technical subjects where teaching and learning in an online environment is even more challenging. This paper aims to identify the technological and social enablers and barriers to effective teaching of Computer Science topics in a wholly online environment from the perspective of instructors and learners by using the School of Computer Information Science (SCIS) as a case study. The paper reports the preliminary findings of historical enrolment data from SCIS, to determine if the online environment is a major factor in retention rates for online students

Factors that influence successful online teaching and learning programs in technical computer science subjects

Since the mid to late 1990s, the World Wide Web has been used as a distributed learning mechanism, enhancing the digital learning environment to support distance and on-campus students. Web technology has been adopted to assist learners with real-time studying at a distance. Consequently, Web delivery has grown rapidly and has been used as a vehicle for learning. Many universities have developed wholly online distance education programs. These changes in distance education have been developed in an attempt to provide easier access to educational opportunities for students who are located remotely from the university, who are working or who have other constraints/commitments such as family commitments. However, online distance learning in Computer Science courses remains challenging for both instructors and students. Research has shown that there is a significant risk factor for online courses in Computer Science. Course developers and instructors need to be aware of the particular needs of Computer Science students when establishing online courses, if they wish to graduate successful and satisfied students. This is particularly true in technical subjects where teaching and learning in an online environment is even more challenging. This paper aims to identify the technological and social enablers and barriers to effective teaching of Computer Science topics in a wholly online environment from the perspective of instructors and learners by using the School of Computer Information Science (SCIS) as a case study. The paper reports the preliminary findings of historical enrolment data from SCIS, to determine if the online environment is a major factor in retention rates for online students

An overview of web accessibility in Greece: a comparative study 2004-2008

This communication reports on the results of a web accessibility audit of public Web sites in Greece. The audit was conducted in 2008 by the Human Computer Interaction Laboratory of the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH, in its capacity as the Greek National Contact Centre of the European Design for All e-Accessibility Network. In an earlier e-Accessibility study in 2004, that evaluated approximately 250 public and commercial Web sites in Greece, 73% of the sample failed to meet the most basic requirements for web accessibility (http://www.infosoc.gr/NR/rdonlyres/0B306F9C-A819-4F96-ABB1-A21945D1D2B3/1092/final_report.pdf). Four years later, in the context of a re-audit, a similar sample was examined for compliance with the same web accessibility standard (WCAG 1.0), as set by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. The accessibility checks were conducted during the period from March to September 2008. A comparison of the results indicates that although new web development technologies may have been employed, instead of improving the overall status of e-accessibility, this has resulted in a serious deterioration in overall accessibility levels. Such findings—85% of sites failed to comply with Level A—suggest that Greek Web sites are likely to present even more significant access barriers to people with disability than in the past. As Web Accessibility is poorly understood and, until today, new platforms have failed to deliver products that conform to WCAG, the need emerges for a concrete legislative framework to set accessibility specifications for all public Web sites in Greece

A flexible service selection for executing virtual services

[EN] With the adoption of a service-oriented paradigm on the Web, many software services are likely to fulfil similar functional needs for end-users. We propose to aggregate functionally equivalent software services within one single virtual service, that is, to associate a functionality, a graphical user interface (GUI), and a set of selection rules. When an end user invokes such a virtual service through its GUI to answer his/her functional need, the software service that best responds to the end-user s selection policy is selected and executed and the result is then rendered to the end-user through the GUI of the virtual service. A key innovation in this paper is the flexibility of our proposed service selection policy. First, each selection policy can refer to heterogeneous parameters (e.g., service price, end-user location, and QoS). Second, additional parameters can be added to an existing or new policy with little investment. Third, the end users themselves define a selection policy to apply during the selection process, thanks to the GUI element added as part of the virtual service design. This approach was validated though the design, implementation, and testing of an end-to-end architecture, including the implementation of several virtual services and utilizing several software services available today on the Web.This work was partially supported in part by SERVERY (Service Platform for Innovative Communication Environment), a CELTIC project that aims to create a Service Marketplace that bridges the Internet and Telco worlds by merging the flexibility and openness of the former with the trustworthiness and reliability of the latter, enabling effective and profitable cooperation among actors.Laga, N.; Bertin, E.; Crespi, N.; Bedini, I.; Molina Moreno, B.; Zhao, Z. (2013). A flexible service selection for executing virtual services. 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Classifying Web sites and Web pages: the use of metrics and URL characteristics as markers

Points to the way in which computer scientists and librarians working with the World Wide Web are turning to traditional library and information science techniques, such as cataloguing and classification, to bring order to the chaos of the Web. Explores cataloguing opportunities offered by the ephemeral nature of materials on the Web and examines several of the latter’s unique characteristics. Suggests the coupling of automated filtering and measuring to the Web record cataloguing process, with particular reference to the ephemeral nature of Web documents and the ability to measure Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and Web document characteristics and migrate them to catalogue records using automated procedures. Reports results of an ongoing longitudinal study of 361 randomly selected Web pages and their Web sites, the data being collected weekly using the Flashsite 1.01 software package. Four basic approaches to ordering information on the Web were studied: postcoordinate keyword and full-text indexes; application of both precoordinate and postcoordinate filters or identifiers to the native document by either authors or indexers; use of thesauri and other classification schemes; and bibliometric techniques employing mapping of hypertext links and other citation systems. Concludes that off-the-shelf technology exists that allows the monitoring of Web sites and Web pages to ‘measure’ Web page and Web site characteristics, to process quantified changes, and to write those changes to bibliographic records. Capturing semantic or meaningful change is more complex, but these can be approximated using existing software.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

ImpaCT2: pupils' and teachers' perceptions of ICT in the home, school and community

The Strand 2 report of the ImpaCT 2 research describes the results of applying a range of research methods to explore, how pupils use ICT, in particular out of school and what had been gained from this use. ImpaCT2 was a major longitudinal study (1999-2002) involving 60 schools in England, its aims were to: identify the impact of networked technologies on the school and out-of-school environment; determine whether or not this impact affected the educational attainment of pupils aged 8 - 16 years (at Key Stages 2, 3, and 4); and provide information that would assist in the formation of national, local and school policies on the deployment of ICT

Open source repositories: Implications for libraries

Software that is accepted as “Open source” should comply with 10 conditions which are itinerated in the paper. The paper subsequently describes the application of open source initiatives in the digital library context. Three open source digital library initiatives developed by the Digital Library Research Group at the Faculty of Computer Science and information Technology, University of Malaya are highlighted. These are; (a) MyManuskrip: digital library of Malay manuscripts; (b) MyAIS : Digital library of Malaysian scholarly journals and conference proceedings; and (d) DSpace@Um: a digital library of dissertations, theses and final year project reports. Other “free” systems such as EJUM: electronic journal of university of Malaya is also described to highlight the slight difference between open source and being free. The paper also describes the libraries involved in the initiatives and the changing eco-system which libraries must accept to embrace the open source culture

NGOS and Internet Use in Uganda

Information technology (IT) research has ignored examining\ud the impact of the Internet on unconnected stakeholder communities in the South. This research, which investigates how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with connectivity are utilising the Internet for their daily operations, and how they are able to acquire and disseminate information from the Internet to their stakeholders, hopes to correct such injustices. The research was undertaken over an eight-week period in early 1998 in Uganda, East Africa. The survey involved representatives of 33 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) responding to seven openended questions related to their organisations’ use of the Internet, and their information communication patterns. The paper begins with a brief background on Uganda and its telecommunications environment, including a summary of the seven Internet Service Providers (ISPs) currently operating in the country. The survey questions are identified, and the responses are organised into thematic categories which became apparent during the course of the study. The term “Internet” is used to refer to email-only services, as well as World Wide Web services. The research found that NGOs report benefiting from their use of the Internet through reduced transmission costs, access to new and relevant information, and greater contact with their own field sites and partner organisations. NGO representatives’ responses also indicate that the dissemination of Internet-acquired information is occurring with their stakeholders, regardless whether those stakeholders have connectivity or not. The majority of NGOs surveyed (70%) have only one computer with Internet connectivity within their offices; this presents challenges and restrictions in terms of the frequency with which the Internet can be accessed. A mere 5% of the NGOs with field sites reported that those sites were connected with either email or Internet; 33% reported having field sites without any means of direct voice or data transmission systems. The\ud majority of NGOs with World Wide Web service reported using the systems for accessing and researching documents relevant to their work, but 32% of those organisations reported that they either seldom or never used the Internet that was available to them. Most NGOs reported that they used the email to communicate with international partners; use of the\ud Internet for local communications is low. Respondents reported that email was a very convenient mode of communications, effective in transmitting documents at lower costs than other technologies. Obtaining access to the\ud computers, and the sending and receiving of attached documents proved the most problematic issues for respondents; the latter issue raises questions about the quality of training these organisations are receiving\ud from their ISPs. The paper concludes with lessons learned from the research, and recommends areas for more detailed study

Illinois Digital Scholarship: Preserving and Accessing the Digital Past, Present, and Future

Since the University's establishment in 1867, its scholarly output has been issued primarily in print, and the University Library and Archives have been readily able to collect, preserve, and to provide access to that output. Today, technological, economic, political and social forces are buffeting all means of scholarly communication. Scholars, academic institutions and publishers are engaged in debate about the impact of digital scholarship and open access publishing on the promotion and tenure process. The upsurge in digital scholarship affects many aspects of the academic enterprise, including how we record, evaluate, preserve, organize and disseminate scholarly work. The result has left the Library with no ready means by which to archive digitally produced publications, reports, presentations, and learning objects, much of which cannot be adequately represented in print form. In this incredibly fluid environment of digital scholarship, the critical question of how we will collect, preserve, and manage access to this important part of the University scholarly record demands a rational and forward-looking plan - one that includes perspectives from diverse scholarly disciplines, incorporates significant research breakthroughs in information science and computer science, and makes effective projections for future integration within the Library and computing services as a part of the campus infrastructure.Prepared jointly by the University of Illinois Library and CITES at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaig