Beyond “appropriate” technology. Mobilizing education for development

Having established that technology mediated instruction of some kind\ud has potential and a valuable role to play in education for on the move and remote\ud area learners the paper looks at practice as documented and suggests that social\ud and cultural barriers are a greater challenge than technological ones. It concludes\ud by suggesting that successful implementation may depend both on use of familiar\ud technology i.e. phones rather than internet, and establishing for users a social and\ud cultural validity for using that technology for the delivery of education

Culture in the online class

This study investigates the construction of culture in a remote-accessed virtual class with learners who have been recruited globally. Having reviewed the literature of the field it concludes that using a framework of ideas which equates culture with nationality is problematic, as it tends to emphasise dissonance and difference in classes which are nonetheless functional. Instead the study proposes that culture should be regarded as a process of ongoing negotiation between the different elements involved in the learning context. In the online class this involves not only students, tutors and course materials but also the technology being used. In negotiation, human elements draw on understandings they have previously developed through prior experience of other cultural contexts (including nationality), whilst the understandings of designers and developers are reflected in the structure and functionality of the technology and the course materials provided for the class.Using a methodological framework based on grounded theory a picture of the practice of negotiation of culture in an online class is developed. Posting messages to class discussion forums is found to be the primary means of negotiation of culture. Examples of discussions, and learners' subsequent reflections on them in interviews, demonstrate how issues are presented, and how and what authorities are drawn on to validate or dispute the positions presented. Core themes of technology, time, authority and control are identified as arising across different instances of negotiation. These are seen to introduce contradictions and uncertainties into the negotiation process, and thus potentially impede its effectiveness.Overall, the study argues that the construction of culture in the online class is neither the product of essential attributes of the learners, nor a fixed linear process but, rather, an iterative process of multiple incidents of negotiation. Lessons learned over time provide material for future negotiation but cannot in themselves act as predictive tools. Some suggestions are made for the direction of future research aimed at giving participants more control over this process. Finally, suggestions are offered as to how this view of culture as negotiation can assist the facilitation of interaction and learning in the online clas

Digital forensics: an integrated approach for the investigation of cyber/computer related crimes

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyDigital forensics has become a predominant field in recent times and courts have had to deal with an influx of related cases over the past decade. As computer/cyber related criminal attacks become more predominant in today’s technologically driven society the need for and use of, digital evidence in courts has increased. There is the urgent need to hold perpetrators of such crimes accountable and successfully prosecuting them. The process used to acquire this digital evidence (to be used in cases in courts) is digital forensics. The procedures currently used in the digital forensic process were developed focusing on particular areas of the digital evidence acquisition process. This has resulted in very little regard being made for the core components of the digital forensics field, for example the legal and ethical along with other integral aspects of investigations as a whole. These core facets are important for a number of reasons including the fact that other forensic sciences have included them, and to survive as a true forensics discipline digital forensics must ensure that they are accounted for. This is because, digital forensics like other forensics disciplines must ensure that the evidence (digital evidence) produced from the process is able to withstand the rigors of a courtroom. Digital forensics is a new and developing field still in its infancy when compared to traditional forensics fields such as botany or anthropology. Over the years development in the field has been tool centered, being driven by commercial developers of the tools used in the digital investigative process. This, along with having no set standards to guide digital forensics practitioners operating in the field has led to issues regarding the reliability, verifiability and consistency of digital evidence when presented in court cases. Additionally some developers have neglected the fact that the mere mention of the word forensics suggests courts of law, and thus legal practitioners will be intimately involved. Such omissions have resulted in the digital evidence being acquired for use in various investigations facing major challenges when presented in a number of cases. Mitigation of such issues is possible with the development of a standard set of methodologies flexible enough to accommodate the intricacies of all fields to be considered when dealing with digital evidence. This thesis addresses issues regarding digital forensics frameworks, methods, methodologies and standards for acquiring digital evidence using the grounded theory approach. Data was gathered using literature surveys, questionnaires and interviews electronically. Collecting data using electronic means proved useful when there is need to collect data from different jurisdictions worldwide. Initial surveys indicated that there were no existing standards in place and that the terms models/frameworks and methodologies were used interchangeably to refer to methodologies. A framework and methodology have been developed to address the identified issues and represent the major contribution of this research. The dissertation outlines solutions to the identified issues and presents the 2IR Framework of standards which governs the 2IR Methodology supported by a mobile application and a curriculum of studies. These designs were developed using an integrated approach incorporating all four core facets of the digital forensics field. This research lays the foundation for a single integrated approach to digital forensics and can be further developed to ensure the robustness of process and procedures used by digital forensics practitioners worldwide

Simulation Control Graphical User Interface Logging Report

One of the many tasks of my project was to revise the code of the Simulation Control Graphical User Interface (SIM GUI) to enable logging functionality to a file. I was also tasked with developing a script that directed the startup and initialization flow of the various LCS software components. This makes sure that a software component will not spin up until all the appropriate dependencies have been configured properly. Also I was able to assist hardware modelers in verifying the configuration of models after they have been upgraded to a new software version. I developed some code that analyzes the MDL files to determine if any error were generated due to the upgrade process. Another one of the projects assigned to me was supporting the End-to-End Hardware/Software Daily Tag-up meeting

Teaching towards social and ecological justice online: Introduction to Global Citizenship at UBC

How can we help university students make connections between ‘academic knowledge’, and their roles as members of local and global communities? How do we create a forum for students to engage in issues of social and ecological justice through critical thought, moral commitment and meaningful engagement in their learning and coming to know as global citizens? We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers and instructors who have collaboratively developed, and are now co-teaching an international, interactive, fully online university course: Introduction to Global Citizenship, available to students at five universities around the world. Our course combines academic rigour with personal reflection and group discussion. It provides students with a broad understanding of barriers and bridges to global citizenship, brings greater awareness of key global issues, and encourages individual and collective action and accountability on issues of sustainability and social justice. Pilot delivery of our course in 2005-2006 suggests that it offers students an extremely challenging, thought-provoking, international educational experience, as we learn about and discuss global issues together. In this working session, we hope describe our experiences with this course project, and to facilitate a productive dialogue with colleagues around teaching strategies for transformative learning in higher education. What ‘kinds’ of transformative learning are we seeking and how can we recognize it? Which instructional strategies facilitate deeper critical analysis and personal reflection? What roles might technology and interdisciplinarity play in this undertaking? Which investigative approaches might help us move our institutions beyond lipservice to global education

The changing influence of societal culture on job satisfaction across Europe

This paper contributes to the growing multidisciplinary body of literature on subjective well-being by investigating the longitudinal stability and impact of societal cultural values (SCVs) – as opposed to the more common organizational values – on job satisfaction. It is assumed that SCVs evolve slowly; hence, their impact on job satisfaction is likely to remain stable over time. False adherence to this assumption could cause misalignment between organizational policies/practices and expectations formed by societal culture, decreasing job satisfaction and adversely affecting productivity, competiveness and prosperity. Four waves of the European Values Study are used to examine whether SCVs have evolved and their impacts on job satisfaction over a relatively short time: 1981–2008. SCVs are parameterized through reference to traditional vs secular-rational, and survival vs self-expression value continuums. Results indicate that the strength of many SCVs has declined, the impacts of traditional societal values on job satisfaction have remained fairly constant, and the impacts of survival societal values on job satisfaction have declined substantially over this sample period. These reductions in SCVs amplify the importance of accounting for such changes when designing new or adjusting existing policies/practices to enhance job satisfaction and stimulate improvements in productivity, competitiveness and prosperity

Exploring the potential of online communities for distance tutors

As the name implies, distance tutors commonly work away from campus and rarely have an opportunity for ongoing support and informal development such as that enjoyed by campus based staff. In this context we believe there is much potential in making provision for the development of online communities. This Chapter describes four case studies of the establishment and evaluation of online communities of practice at the Open University (UK). Communities of practice are in use both as a central part of course related professional development, and also for wider pedagogical issues. Platforms in use include online conferences which support online discussion, and new wiki environments which also offer the potential for extending the use of communities of practice to the development and sharing of resources. We describe the variety of ways in which communities of practice are in use, the major factors which contribute to their success, and the social and institutional challenges to sharing and developing resources within a community

Learning cultures in online education

This paper introduces the theme of culture in online learning and reviews some of the research in this field to date. It identifies and critiques a tendency to view culture solely as an attribute of individuals inherited from national characteristics, and the problem for online learning solely as one of appropriate design for cultural difference. A forthcoming collection of research is described, which problematises the essentialist view of culture and explores issues around the negotiation of 'learning cultures' specific to online environments. Two directions for future research are proposed: one involves the switching of attention away from the generalised characteristics of local consumers of global online learning products, and on to their possibilities for re-purposing these products; the other involves the investigation of learners' uses of the social web and the attitudes to learning that this is becoming associated with