Experience on Mashup Development with End User Programming Environment

Mashups, Web applications integrating data and functionality from other Web sources to provide a new service, have quickly become ubiquitous. Because of their role as a focal point in three important trends (Web 2.0, situational software applications, and end user development), mashups are a crucial emerging technology for information systems education. This paper describes the result of a pilot experiment of an open-ended mashup assignment using an end user Web-based visual development environment: Yahoo’s Pipes. Surveys, qualitative analysis, peer evaluations, and comparative analysis were used to assess the assignment. Initial results indicated that the assignment was effective, well received, and cost efficient. Students found it to be useful, interesting, appropriate, and of the right level of difficulty. They gained the needed expertise in mashups and Yahoo’s Pipes within a short period of time. They developed mashup applications with the expected degree of complexity, maturity, and innovativeness. There were no logistical bottlenecks and grading the open-ended assignment appeared to be consistent among the instructor and peers. The peer evaluations were perceived by students as very useful, even more so than the actual mashup development. Although Yahoo’s Pipes were in general well received, its limitations, such as the lack of programming capability, created some minor issues and changed the designs of some mashups slightly. IS educators interesting in integrating open-ended mashup assignments into their courses may consider including a robust peer evaluation component and selecting a mashup development environment that matches the assignment goals

A Realistic Data Cleansing and Preparation Project

Although data cleansing and preparation are significant tasks in many real-world data projects, they are rarely found in project assignments in IS database courses. This paper describes a pilot study of a relatively open-ended project assignment in a graduate database course. The project required the students to cleanse and prepare five datasets on educational statistics from United Nations Data before storing them in relations that they designed. To gauge the level of students’ prior knowledge on data preparation, the instructor deliberately provided no prior lecture on the topic. A follow-up assignment was a PHP/MySQL Web database application to display educational statistics for a user-specified country. Submitted works and post assignment surveys were studied and analyzed. The result indicated that both assignments were well received and generally beneficial. Although our students appeared not to be well trained in data preparation in their undergraduate studies, they were able to learn quickly enough to produce acceptable products. This approach also appeared to encourage more creativity and better diversity in students’ database designs. Our experience suggested that while it was not difficult to identify interesting realworld datasets of appropriate complexity, the instructors will need to put in extra effort on project evaluation. We believe that this kind of assignment can be adapted in many ways to satisfy different educational objectives and it fits well in a wellrounded IS curriculum. Thus, the goal of the paper is to foster interests in real-world data cleansing projects in database courses with a well-examined case study

Using a Semi-Realistic Database to Support a Database Course

A common problem for university relational database courses is to construct effective databases for instructions and assignments. Highly simplified ‘toy’ databases are easily available for teaching, learning, and practicing. However, they do not reflect the complexity and practical considerations that students encounter in real-world projects after their graduation. On the other hand, production databases may contain too much domain nuances and complexity to be effectively used as a learning tool. Sakila is a semi-realistic, high quality, open source, and highly available database provided by MySQL. This paper describes the use of Sakila as a unified platform to support instructions and multiple assignments of a graduate database course for five semesters. Based on seven surveys with 186 responses, the paper discusses our experience using Sakila. We find this approach promising, and students in general find it more useful and interesting than the highly simplified databases developed by the instructor, or obtained from textbooks. We constructed a collection of 124 problems with suggested solutions on the topics of database modeling and normalization, SQL query, view, stored function, stored procedure, trigger, database Web-driven application development with PHP/MySQL, Relational Algebra using an interpreter, Relational Calculus, XML generation, XPath, and XQuery. This collection is available to Information Systems (IS) educators for adoption or adaptation as assignments, examples, and examination questions to support different database courses

An Investigation Dimension for Understanding and Characterizing Computing Disciplines

Computing disciplines are diverse and overlap extensively. ACM provides two dimensions, theory and target level, as a tool to describe the problem spaces of five disciplines of computing: computer science, information systems, information technology, computer engineering, and software engineering. However, there are still many studies reporting that even majors are not entirely clear about the scopes and tasks of their computing disciplines. Various supplementary approaches and models have been proposed to assist the understanding and characterization of computing disciplines, such as through computing traditions, research-focuses, and positions in the business-technology continuum. This paper proposes a new investigation dimension based on a popular inquiry approach as a complementary third dimension to serve as an additional high order lens for understanding computing disciplines. The application of the model on understanding and characterizing the five ACM disciplines and data science is discussed. The model encourages systematic critical thinking, meaningful learning, and deep reasoning

Global Diffusion of the Internet XV: Web 2.0 Technologies, Principles, and Applications: A Conceptual Framework from Technology Push and Demand Pull Perspective

Web 2.0, the current Internet evolution, can be described by several key features of an expanded Web that is more interactive; allows easy social interactions through participation and collaboration from a variety of human sectors; responds more immediately to users\u27 queries and needs; is easier to search; and provides a faster, smoother, realistic and engaging user search capability, often with automatic updates to users. The purpose of this study is three-fold. First, the primary goal is to propose a conceptual Web 2.0 framework that provides better understanding of the Web 2.0 concept by classifying current key components in a holistic manner. Second, using several selective key components from the conceptual framework, this study conducts case analyses of Web 2.0 applications to discuss how they have adopted the selective key features (i.e., participation, collaboration, rich user experience, social networking, semantics, and interactivity responsiveness) of the conceptual Web 2.0 framework. Finally, the study provides insightful discussion of some challenges and opportunities provided by Web 2.0 to education, business, and social life

From Expectation to Actual Perception after Experience: A Longitudinal Study of the Perceptions of Student Response Systems

Interactive student response systems (SRSs) are becoming popular as many instructors at the tertiary level educationinstitutions adopt the systems to transform traditional passive lectures into interactive classes. Despite the popularity andnumerous benefits of SRSs, there is conflicting evidence regarding the current levels of perceptions and actual performancesbefore and after use the systems. We believe the inconsistent result stems from the differences between the level ofexpectation and the level of actual perceptions after they use the systems. Students’ beliefs and attitudes are key perceptionstoward the information technology (i.e., SRSs) usage. However, these perceptions may change over time as they gain directexperience with the technology. In this study, therefore, we test students’ expectations and perceptions of the technology andprovide a comparative result from a longitudinal perspective. More specifically, in this study, we examine students’perceptional differences in terms of well-known technology acceptance constructs such as perceived usefulness, ease of use,enjoyment, and intention to use the systems before and after they actually use the systems.The results confirm that there are differences between the levels of expectations and actually perceptions of cognitive beliefsacross three-stage of experience. However, there are no differences of students’ perceptions between initial usage andsecond-time usage. In other words, the very first direct experience of students will become a salient determinant of theirperception of cognitive beliefs and behavioral intention, but the second experience does not provide the same level of impactas much the first one does. We believe that the result of the study will provide solid understanding of the gap between thelevels of expectations and actual perceptions of a technology before and after usage, which will explain the inconsistentresults related to the SRSs. Limitations and future directions are discussed

A Blockchain-Inspired, Multi-Layered Transaction Model for Business Process Modeling

Software development for information systems can be characterized by the development of three kinds of models: (1) business models for business goals and requirements, (2) logical models for the solution design, and (3) physical models for actual implementation. The concept of transactions can beneficially be applied to these models. Past efforts for applying low-level transaction concepts to higher-level models focused on the atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) properties supported by traditional relational DBMS. We propose a novel transaction model that (1) refines the formalism of the ACID properties, and (2) adds blockchain-inspired formalism and properties including statefulness, privacy, and accountability. It supports transaction decomposition to sub-transactions, thus enabling multi-layered transactions. The proposed model is based on our experience on developing a proof-of-concept prototypical Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) model repository using the blockchain platform Hyperledger’s Fabric. A use case of the prototype is used as the illustrative example

Blockchain-Augmented Organizations

Blockchains can be used to enable new kinds of organizations, especially Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO). In DAO, governance rules and transaction processing provided by traditional centralized authorities to support intermediation are completely replaced by the automated execution of trusted smart contracts to realize secure and immutable transactions. However, DAO may not be suitable for many business cases. Nevertheless, blockchains provide many unique functions, such as immutability, security, trust, and traceability, so that they can be used to augment existing software solutions. We introduce the concept of Blockchain-Augmented Organizations (BAO), in which traditional, Non-Blockchain Organizations (NBO) are augmented by the blockchain-based organizations. We compare BAO with DAO and NBO, and propose a model-based, process-driven engineering approach for constructing blockchain organizations and applications. Experience gained on a pilot blockchain prototyping experiment on an aerospace Model-Based Systems Engineering project using Hyperledger’s Fabric is used to elaborate and exemplify the paper