William D. Armitage

Sea Robot-Assisted Inspection

The sea robot-assisted inspection (Sea-RAI) marsupial robot team is the first known manportable unmanned surface vehicle (USV) that hosts an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Sea-RAI is designed for inspecting littoral environments for military, environmental, and disaster-response applications. The project also provides a platform for exploring the four roles in a marsupial team: courier, messenger, manager, and coach. The cooperation between the vehicles extends their capabilities beyond the capabilities of a single vehicle. This article describes the robot team, details the design and construction of low-cost USVs, and describes the demonstration of the integrated system and the four key capabilities, such as seaworthiness, data display, marsupialism, and mission logging.

Rapid conversion of an IT degree program to online delivery: impact, problems, solutions and challenges

At our institution, online delivery was initially seen as a way to extend the geographic reach of a specialized upper-division degree program, the Bachelor of Science in Applied Sciences (BSAS), targeting holders of community college Associates in Science (AS) degrees, with the hoped-for impact of increasing enrollment. This program shared many required courses with our flagship program, the BS in Information Technology (BSIT), including the upper-division entry point for both programs, CGS3303 IT Concepts. Implementing this course in an asynchronous online mode resulted in an increase in enrollment from 17 (fall, 2007) to 70 (spring, 2008); most of these 70 students identified as BSIT, leading us to fast-track conversion to online modes for all of our core courses and electives. This accelerated pace of online development presented many challenges and difficulties, including ensuring the quality of our finished course product. Faculty buy-in, assisted by a stipend program for online development, was essential, as was the presence of quality instructional technology support. An NSF-funded infrastructure (SOFTICE) allowed the offering of problematic laboratory courses (Operating Systems, Networks) safely and securely in an online mode. A course quality review process was implemented as part of the stipend program, which also largely resolved intellectual property issues. Nonetheless, remaining are some issues and concerns, which are discussed in this paper. Recommendations, observations and suggested processes are included for those who may be considering transitioning an IT degree program to online delivery.

Inexpensive, Scalable and Transparent Open Source Classroom Management for Linux-based Laboratories

Many courses in the computing curricula (CS, ITl) can benefit form hands-on pedagogical activities in the form of laboratory components associated with the lectures. While the benefits of such hands-on learning sessions is agreed upon, some courses offer a non-trivial challenge to instructors (and sometime even institutions) interested in providing this kind of experience to their students. Operating systems, system administration and networking are all examples of laboratories for which students need root access to be able to experiment with the concepts and implementation studied in the lectures. With this constraint comes the need for a more flexible classroom management strategy. This paper explores how some open source virtualization and clustering technologies can be deployed to provide students, as well as instructors, with such an environment. We focus on providing solutions which can integrate transparently to any campus without involving significant changes to the classroom computers. This enables us to integrate Linux-based courseware even on campuses exclusively using proprietary software without actually requiring Linux to be installed in the classrooms. We also emphasize the scalability aspect by providing a highly cost-effective solution which can be easily scaled up as the number of students or the requirements of the course in terms of computational power increase.

Design and Launch of an Intensive Cybersecurity Program for Military Veterans

The demand for trained cybersecurity operators is growing more quickly than traditional programs in higher education can fill. At the same time, unemployment for returning military veterans has become a nationally discussed problem. We describe the design and launch of New Skills for a New Fight (NSNF), an intensive, one-year program to train military veterans for the cybersecurity field. This non-traditional program, which leverages experience that veterans gained in military service, includes recruitment and selection, a base of knowledge in the form of four university courses in a simultaneous cohort mode, a period of hands-on cybersecurity training, industry certifications and a practical internship in a Security Operations Center (SOC). Twenty veterans entered this pilot program in January of 2016, and will complete in less than a years time. Initially funded by a global financial services company, the program provides veterans with an expense-free preparation for an entry-level cybersecurity job.

Multi-perspective survey of the relevance of the revised bloom's taxonomy to an introduction to linux course

Equipping students with higher-order thinking skills as part of a program in information technology is no trivial aim. Course creation must always have this goal in mind. In particular, learning activities and assessments must be designed to teach, encourage the use of, and assess success in achieving this goal beyond merely teaching facts, methods and techniques. In this paper, we examine the degree to which we were able to assess higher-order thinking skills in students enrolled in the first course of an online Linux system administration curriculum. To assist other educators contemplating similar efforts, we briefly describe methods used to classify quiz and assignment items using the Revised Bloom Taxonomy (RBT) and discuss results from a survey administered to students who completed the course. Lessons learned throughout the process are described.