Edward P. Holden

Databases in the cloud: a work in progress

This paper describes a curricular initiative in cloud computing intended to keep our information technology (IT) curriculum at the forefront of technology. Currently, our IT degrees offer extensive database concentrations at both the undergraduate (BS-IT) and graduate (MS-IT) levels. Plus in the future, we plan to expand our offerings with a graduate degree focused on enterprise data management, initially on-campus, but ideally also in online learning format. Supporting this curriculum requires extensive lab facilities where students can experiment with different aspects of database architecture, implementation, and administration. Computing in the cloud may provide additional infrastructure and curricular flexibility. Cloud computing is the use of virtual computing technology that is scalable to a given applications specific requirements, without local investment in extensive infrastructure, because the computing resources are provided by various vendors as a service over the Internet. This paper describes our initial work with a graduate student in preparing to offer our foundation database administration course, Database Architecture and Implementation, in the cloud. The student has implemented the existing lab activities for this course under Oracle 11g using currently-available cloud resources. In addition to discussing the choices and pitfalls involved in this initial implementation, this paper discusses our plans to move forward in this area: testing cloud-based education with our database students; followed later by full scale implementation, along with the cost implications. If successful, this approach will open up the ability to move into new curricular areas and technologies without costly upfront investment in hardware and software.

The experience factor in early programming education

Like most computing departments, the Information Technology (IT) Department of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences (GCCIS) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) offers an introductory programming sequence. Students typically spend their first three quarters completing the sequence. We have found that students enter the sequence with varying degrees of experience ranging from none at all to significant programming experience. Those with previous exposure to programming could have received this experience in many different ways: programming courses in high school, programming that is tangential to other high school courses, clubs, self study, and work experience. In 2003, the authors discussed the preliminary results of a study examining the impact of prior experience on students entering an introductory programming sequence [6]. The preliminary results indicated that prior programming experience did have an impact on student performance in the first course in the programming sequence; however it did not seem to have a significant impact on student performance in subsequent courses. By the end of the sequence, students seemed to have equivalent performance. The data, however, were incomplete. Not all students had completed the sequence by the end of the school year. This paper will reexamine the data now that students have completed the courses.

Databases in the cloud: a status report

This paper updates an earlier paper on the use of cloud computing in database curriculum. That paper described a curricular initiative in cloud computing initially intended to keep our information technology (IT) curriculum at the forefront of technology and to give students the flexibility to work at any location, not just our labs. Currently, our IT degrees offer extensive database concentrations at both the undergraduate (BS-IT) and graduate (MS-IT) levels. This paper reports on the results of two years of operation using a cloud provider for lab exercises in our Database Architecture and Implementation course. It discusses the benefits gained and concludes with an overview of a new cloud deployment strategy that improves disaster planning for our curricular infrastructure and provides an extension to another campus. We discuss how the Cloud Vendor Selection Model, proposed in our previous paper, shows the ways in which the different layers of cloud services interact with each other. Plus we show how the different categories of cloud users in this model can be supported by different educational tools to meet course objectives. Finally, we discuss the various issues and challenges that we have experienced when implementing cloud solutions in an educational environment.

The geographic information science and technology and information technology bodies of knowledge: an ontological alignment

In this paper, we present a philosophical discussion of ontological alignments between the fields of Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIS & T) and Information Technology (IT) based on existing bodies of knowledge (BOKs). We argue that tighter integration of concepts from GIS & T into IT curriculum can provide three specific opportunities for IT education - enhanced spatial thinking, new interdisciplinary and innovative application areas, and student employment opportunities. We also discuss specific ideas for curricular integration based on the alignments and provide a list of free and open source GIS & T software, data and learning resources for IT educators interested in incorporating GIS & T concepts and technologies into their teaching.

Security Requirements Embedded in MS Programs in Information Sciences and Technologies

This paper reviews and assesses the current coverage of security topics in the masters programs and proposes the best method for educating students in an Information Sciences and Technologies curriculum at Rochester Institute of Technology. We start by describing a case study of student projects in a data-warehousing course to motivate the need to cover security topics in our curriculum. We then discuss security topics related to the modern computing landscape, which we plan to cover in our MS programs: Internet of Things, Big Data and Cloud Computing. We describe a multi-threaded approach to introduce security into our programs by spreading the topics across core and elective courses that have related topics.

Pillars of Analytics Applied in MS Degree in Information Sciences and Technologies

The Master of Science (MS) program in Information Sciences and Technologies (IST) at Rochester Institute of Technology conducted a significant upgrade of its curriculum in 2013, aiming to better prepare its graduates for the new trends and challenges in the fast evolving IT computing industry. In particular, the upgraded MS program places a strong emphasis on data analytics, where all students in the program get an intensive training in data analytics foundation in our core courses. Students can then continue with advanced work in the Analytics Track to receive deeper theoretical knowledge in the field. In this paper, we report our experience of offering this analytics-centric curriculum over the past two years. We first formally define four pillars of analytics and trace the skills needed to support each pillar and the courses that provide those skills. We then describe the course experiences through a sampling of the projects completed by students in their course work. We also provide some student feedback on the course experience. We conclude with a discussion of the capstone experience and a sampling of capstone projects. We show the movement toward analytics in the capstone experiences, particularly since the program began in 2013. The positive course experience and the fast increasing number of capstone projects in the analytics area show strong evidence about the initial success of the analytics-centric curriculum.

Web-Based Implementation of Data Warehouse Schema Evolution

An organization collects current and historical data for a data warehouse from disparate sources across the organization to support management for making decisions. The data sources change their contents and structure dynamically to reflect business changes or organization requirements, which causes data warehouse evolution in order to provide consistent analytical results. This evolution may cause changes in contents or a schema of a data warehouse. This paper adapts a schema evolution method to address the data warehouse evolution given a data warehouse is built as a multidimensional schema. While existing works have identified and developed schema evolution operations based on conceptual models to enforce schema correctness, only a few have developed software tools to enforce schema correctness of those operations. They are also coupled with specific DBMSs (e.g., SQL Server) and provide limited GUI capability. This paper aims to develop a web-based implementation to support data warehouse schema evolution. It offers all the benefits that Internet browser-based applications provide, by allowing users to design, view, and modify data warehouse schema graphically. This work focuses on evolution operations in dimensional tables, which includes changes in levels, hierarchies, and paths. Schema correctness for each schema evolution operation is ensured by procedural codes implemented in PHP.

Assessment of an introductory database course: a case study

The Information Technology Department of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology uses program assessment activities to guide curricular decisions which increase the quality of our programs. The assessment process routinely measures student success at achieving program objectives and consequently feeds the results back into the curriculum design process. Core competencies for each degree program are stated as behaviorally-based objectives. When it is determined that students overall are not achieving a specified criterion level for any given objective, these data are fed back to a curriculum design team where changes are made to improve student performance. Specifically, this paper will document the assessment plan developed in 2006 for an introductory database and data modeling course and the subsequent assessment. The assessment indicated an area that did not meet our established expectations for student success. Improvements were made to the course as a result of this assessment. This paper will illustrate the use of class exercises and examination questions to evaluate student success in achieving specified objectives. Results from the 2008 course assessment will be discussed.

IT Curriculum: Coping with Technology Trends & Industry Demands

The field of Information Technology (IT) has evolved more rapidly over the past 15 years than ever thought possible. To keep up with industry demands, IT educators have had to react accordingly and with enough foresight to identify those trends that are short lived and those that are here to stay. In this paper, we identify a four-layer IT Stack with associated core techniques within each layer. The evolution of the core techniques over time is then discussed with respect to industry trends, changes in ACM/IEEE IT curricula, and the topics of technical oriented papers presented at the ACM SIGITE conference since 2003. Finally, a case study chronicling the evolution of an Information Technology MS program is presented, along with recommendations for modeling future IT curriculum.

Investigating the effectiveness of early programming-centric models for IT education

Computer Science and Information Technology education offers significant challenges for both educators and students. Oftentimes students may not have much experience with logic, math and reasoning which may inhibit the transfer of knowledge in early stages. If, on the other hand, students have some prior experience, it may facilitate the understanding of early and mid-term concepts and will hopefully produce a more gradual learning curve for students to follow. This paper discusses a boot camp that was offered to incoming IT students and provides the results.