The curriculum design of computing & information systems with concentration in database systems

© 2012 IADIS. In today\u27s competitive market, graduates need specialized skills and knowledge about their chosen field. Jobs in Information Systems (IS) are becoming diversified and that generic IS curriculum is no longer meet all the needs for all IS jobs. This paper presents a study on the design of curriculum of Information Systems degree with concentration on Database Systems. The proposed curriculum follows the principles guiding the Information Systems (IS) curriculum design recommended by the Association of Information Systems (AIS) and is aligned with Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) nine program outcome criteria

Accessibility Evaluation of Dubai e-Government Websites: Findings and Implications

Most governments today are promoting the transition of their countries towards an information society where e-Government websites are becoming the primary gateways to citizens and businesses for government information and eservice delivery. E-Government can be broadly defined as the unification of information and communication technologies, and administrative practices to provide government e-services to citizens, businesses and other e-Governments (Deakins and Dillon, 2002). The benefits of online government e-services include better efficiency, user convenience and more citizen political involvement (Freeman and Loo, 2009). To enable all citizens to benefit from the full potential of eGovernment services, it is important to secure universal accessibility. This accessibility enables persons with disabilities to take full advantage of the information and services offered by eGovernments; the same way a person with no disability would

Towards the development of activities-oriented platforms serving communities of practice

Providing communities of practice (CoPs) with IT tools is increasingly becoming a challenge for researchers. The first step towards this goal is extracting CoPs needs and proposing accordingly relevant tools. We present in this research the user-centred and application-centred platforms as options to embed such relevant tools for CoPs. We raised their main limitations as they are used either for socialising or simply centralising tools which is significantly different from platforms serving CoPs. Consequently, we present the need to have dedicated platforms for CoPs based on the widget technology and we enumerate some key features such as Single sign-on and awareness. Then, we present a higher level of integration for providing activity-oriented platforms which is the interoperability of embedded widgets and its implications such as resources reuse and functionalities reuse. Finally, we propose a structure for such platforms. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

E-Government Web Accessibility: WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Compliance

Most e-governments have traditionally used version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a basis to ensure that their websites are accessible by people with disabilities. This was reflected in their design guidelines, accessibility evaluations, policy-making and legislations. Recently, WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC International accessibility standard that has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to examine if there is a need for e-governments to reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0 conformance testing identified some notable accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG 1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that egovernments should develop and update their web content and accessibility policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria. Additional implications for practice and academic research are also provided

A novel approach for analyzing student interaction with educational systems

© 2017 IEEE. The data in higher educational institutions come from the interaction of students with the various online systems, such as learning management, registration, advising and email. Research in the field of educational data mining is concerned with the collection and analysis of such data to discover new insights about student behavior, learning style and success factors. Since different departments in an institution manage different IT systems, collecting data from all of these departments requires collaboration. The data has to be extracted from many systems, which uses different data formats. Therefore, a typical research work in this field analyzes data extracted from one system. This paper, on the other hand, analyzes the network traffic that students generate while on-campus. This approach provides us with a better view of the student interaction with the educational systems, compared to the single view achieved by analyzing data from one system. We anonymize student personally identifiable information to protect student privacy. Further, we propose the use of fog computing to enhance student privacy and reduce network load

WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Web Accessibility Compliance: A Case Study

Most e-governments have been using the WCAG 1.0 guidelines as reference to probe their compliance to web accessibility principles. This was reflected in their local accessibility policies, website design, maintenance, and accessibility testing activities. Recently, WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC 40500:2012 International accessibility standard that has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to examine if there is a need for egovernments to reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0 conformance testing identified some notable accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG 1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that e-governments should develop and update their web content and accessibility policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria. Additional implications for practice and for academic research are also provided

Semantically Rich Materialisation Rules for Integrating Heterogeneous Databases

The need for accessing independently developed database systems using a unified or multiple global view(s) has been well recognised. This paper addresses the problem of redundancy of object retrieval in a multidatabase setting. We present the materialisation rules we have used for supporting data integration in a heterogeneous database environment. The materialisation rules are capable of directing the global query processor to combine data from different databases. Also, these rules are able to reconcile database heterogeneity that may be found due to independent database design