C. Richard G. Helps

Mobile Application Development: Essential New Directions for IT

As mobile devices have become more powerful and pervasive, mobile computing has become more important. As the market share of mobile operating systems steadily grows and more IT applications are developed and deployed on mobile devices, this will become a larger and increasing part of professional IT practice. Consequently IT students should gain experience creating and deploying mobile applications. We designed a project for a junior level operating systems course and asked 35 students to develop an application using one of the following leading mobile device software development kits: Apple iPhone, Microsoft Windows Mobile and Google Android. Students were free to select a platform and define their own applications. While iPhone has approximately 50% of the mobile OS market share, only 8 students selected iPhone as their development platform of choice, 15 selected Android, another 12 selected Windows Mobile. A post-project survey was administered to the students to evaluate the process of choosing a platform, hardware and software features used in their applications, and the overall learning experience. This provided several conclusions about preferences, future applications and learning. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and will help us improve future learning experiences.

Design of a flexible case-study instructional module for operating systems for information technology

Information Technology (IT) is grounded in applications of theoretical principles for solving problems using computing resources. IT instructors continually face the challenge of providing current technology experiences for their students in a rapidly evolving environment. This paper discusses the development of an instructional module which uses a model-based approach to present case studies of operating systems. The instructional design includes several key aspects. Firstly, a general operating system model is presented as a conceptual model for the instruction. An appropriate theoretical model for IT, as opposed to other computing disciplines or viewpoints, is proposed. Secondly, the structures of real operating systems, (Linux and WinXP), are presented as case studies. The case studies are related to the theoretical model and anchored to reality by using various software tools to show the instantiation of the theoretical concepts in the actual systems. Thirdly, learning effectiveness is enhanced by using a learn-expand-teach instructional design. An important issue within IT is the rapid evolution of the discipline. The implications of designing the module to cater for future changes in operating systems, using the learn-expand-teach approach, are discussed.

Student expectations of computing majors

This paper describes research into student motivation and satisfaction with various computing majors on campus. A survey was administered to 422 computing majors and a different survey was administered to approximately 800 non-computing majors at Brigham Young University. The objective was to discover student understanding and expectations of the Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Technology programs on campus. Students within these majors were asked about their satisfaction and career expectations and non-computer majors were asked about their understanding of the computing majors. Motivations for selecting specific majors were explored. Recommendations are made for helping students select the most appropriate computing major for their needs.

Dancing on quicksand gracefully: instructional design for rapidly evolving technology courses

One of the challenges of higher education in technology, especially in computer disciplines, is the rapid change of technical content. In technology disciplines with a tradition of experiential learning instructors need to continually redesign courses to ensure the learning experience for the students is current and relevant. This paper discusses an approach to course design that has been applied to a class in Information Technology that experiences significant changes in course content on a regular basis. The design approach allows many aspects of the course design to remain constant, including much of the class presentation and assessment, while including the latest technology developments and applications in the course. Students collaborate in seeking out new applications in technology and in sharing them with the class. The paper discusses a course module developed using these principles. Different aspects of the design were analyzed. Firstly how successful is this as a mechanism for maintaining course currency with current technological developments, secondly to what extent is this successful for instructors to collaborate with students in acquiring new knowledge in the discipline and thirdly does the instructional design approach adequately support student learning of new application areas in the discipline.

ABET accreditation with IT criteria

In recent years the SIGITE community has invested significant effort into developing IT accreditation standards. New draft general and program specific accreditation criteria were recently created. The Brigham Young University IT program is undergoing an accreditation visit in the near future as a pilot program. Although the IT criteria have not yet been approved by ABET they have been used by the Brigham Young University program in preparing for accreditation and will be considered by the accreditation evaluators in the accreditation visit. This paper will describe the experience of preparing for an ABET IT accreditation visit using the draft standards. Issues of continuous improvement, assessment and accreditation documentation will be discussed. Methods for collecting and presenting accreditation data will be presented. The selection of program objectives related to institution objectives is discussed, as is the link between course outcomes and program outcomes and objectives. The linkage between accreditation criteria and the model curriculum is also discussed. This work follows on from previous work that has been reported elsewhere. Thus there is some overlap with previous papers by one or more of the authors, as well as new work.

Instructional design theory provides insights into evolving information technology technical curricula

One of the challenges of university technological education is the constant evolution of new technologies in most high-tech disciplines. Nowhere is this more apparent than in computer-oriented disciplines that are subject to Moores Law. New developments require frequent updating of college curricula in many fields, with the concomitant additional load on faculty members to not only constantly update their technical knowledge but to constantly invest effort into updating curricula to provide students with a sound and relevant education. Instructional Design (ID) is the educational discipline focused on the theoretical and practical problems inherent in designing curricula. As such ID has developed a number of theories and methodologies that have a bearing on the problem of rapidly changing curricula. In particular some newer evolving theories of viewing instructional design in terms of abstract layers offers a powerful paradigm that will help technology curriculum designers.There is a useful model in the work of Stewart Brand in analyzing how buildings are built in layers that age differently. His work is related to Christopher Alexanders seminal exposition on the design of buildings, which inspired the development of Design Patterns in software design. These approaches also lead to new theoretical approaches in technical educational design.These design theories enable viewing curriculum design in a layered context and thus lead to paradigms which enable updating technical courses to cater for evolutionary changes without having to completely redesign courses. This promises both better instruction and less development effort for course designers.Several related theories relating to this work with some discussion of the practical applications to creating Information Technology curricula are discussed in this paper.

Assessment and accreditation

This panel will feature four speakers with an in-depth knowledge of accreditation and continuous improvement. It will be used both to inform the audience of some of the changes that are likely to occur in IT accreditation criteria in the near future and to seek feedback on specific accreditation-related questions.

Evaluation of a computer networking class in information technology

Information Technology (IT) is a rapidly-developing discipline. IT instructors often design new courses to meet changing needs. There is also a need to evaluate courses once they have been designed and implemented. Evaluation of courses leads to improvements in the learning experiences for students and better understanding of the educational process and outcomes for course designers and instructors. Evaluation and improvement of quality is a requirement for programs accredited under ABET (and other accrediting bodies). A networking class in IT was selected for evaluation. Networking was selected because it is one of the core required topics in the IT curriculum. The course was compared to national standards for curriculum in the networking area. A single class was evaluated but methods were developed which can be applied to other courses in the IT discipline. The evaluation study included evaluation of the course content and the course structure. Student input was obtained through a survey instrument and the validity of the input was considered. Several questions were identified for this evaluation: Did the networking class meet student needs and expectations in terms of content and teaching approach; What are the students preferred learning styles; What coursework should a networking class include compared to what was actually taught; Did success in the earlier foundation class lead to success in the networking class; How well did students perform in this class relative to their performance in the IT major as a whole? Pursuing these questions involved data gathering from students as well as researching student records. Appropriate mechanisms were developed to protect student privacy. The evaluation of this class led to a number of useful insights and recommendations into technical class content, teaching and learning styles, and into the evaluation process. The methods of the study can be used for other courses and for other IT programs.

Collecting IT scholarship: the IT-thesis project

In 2006 it was proposed that one significant factor defining an IT research agenda was the scholarly work published in theses and dissertations from universities with IT graduate programs. It was concluded that a repository of IT research was necessary both to facilitate access to this body of work and to make it possible to do a bottom-up analysis of existing work. This paper reports on the status of our efforts to implement the repository that was proposed. A repository for theses and dissertations has been implemented and about 100 thesis abstracts of interest to scholars in IT have been made available. Many provide links to the text of the electronic source documents. The current repository is small, but useful for students and other researchers as a window on current student research efforts. Here we discuss the design and implementation of the repository along with the issues we have encountered in early efforts to populate it. We also discuss the issues discovered while developing analysis techniques for the repository and proposed improvements. We solicit involvement of the IT community in locating and entering relevant documents into the repository located at http://it-thesis.appspot.com

Comprehensive design of cyber physical systems

In recent years there has been a confluence between different fields addressing the broad field of embedded computer systems (cyber-physical systems). Traditional 8-bit microcontroller-based systems have become more capable and frequently feature 32-bit processors with networking capabilities, thus overlapping larger OS-based systems. Single-board OS-based computers have shrunk to credit-card size and prices on the low end have dropped substantially to overlap the application domain of microcontroller systems and, thirdly, mobile platforms (smartphones, tablets, e-readers etc.) also share many characteristics of these systems and overlap their design and application domains. These systems each have their own design communities, tools and standard approaches. However their commonality and overlapping application domains indicate that they share common design problems. The evolution into newer application areas also brings new problems. The situation becomes more complex when these systems are integrated into larger diverse systems. Design approaches and design problems for these different types of embedded system are reviewed. Overlapping and non-overlapping characteristics and design issues are analyzed. A comprehensive design approach tailored to these cyber-physical systems is proposed. The comprehensive approach addresses design issues for all three of the overlapping fields. It also includes factors sometimes neglected when systems are developed within their own narrower design domains. One of the findings of this investigation is that design in this domain requires a diverse set of skills, usually only found in multi-disciplinary teams. One discipline that is needed but has not traditionally contributed much in this domain is Information Technology. Another finding is that designers trained in the IT discipline with a systems-oriented approach have design skills that are necessary for successful design of these diverse systems.