LIST of ALL ABSTRACTS

Information Science & Library
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Training: The Way to Retain
Valuable IT Employees?

Thomas Acton and Willie Golden
National University of Ireland
Galway, Ireland

Thomas.acton@nuigalway.ie    
Willie.golden@nuigalway.ie

The IT workforce of a company is an important strategic asset, an asset that needs to be managed.  This paper details the results of a survey administered to 200 employees across 39 software companies in Ireland between July and August 2001, with a response rate of 102 (51%).  It presents a descriptive study, which assesses the impact that training practices have on employee retention. It also gathers data on the effects of training initiatives, the types of training in use, and the influence of training on knowledge retention.  IT staff were chosen for this study as they embody the new “knowledge worker” operating in the information economy. The study finds that training helps in retaining knowledge within the organization, but may not help in retaining employees.  The predominant method of training delivery is by instructor-led formal sessions, followed by self-training and workshops. Findings show that more modern methods such as web-based and computer-based training are not pervasive. 

Keywords: IT employees, training, employee retention, knowledge transfer

 
Other
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Markov Chain-based Test Data Adequacy Criteria:  a Complete Family

Mohammed Al-Ghafees and James A. Whittaker
Florida Institute of Technology, FL, USA

malghafees@hotmail.com  jw@cs.fit.edu

The idea of using white box data flow information to select test cases is well established and has proven an effective testing strategy. This paper extends the concept of data flow testing to the case in which the source code is unavailable and only black box information can be used to make test selection decisions. In such cases, data flow testing is performed by constructing a behavior model of the software under test to act as a surrogate for the program flow graph upon which white box data flow testing is based. The behavior model is a graph representation of externally-visible software state and input-induced state transitions. We first summarize the modeling technique and then define the new data flow selection rules and describe how they are used to generate test cases. Theoretical proof of concept is provided based on a characteristic we call transition variation. Finally, we present results from a laboratory experiments in which we compare the fault detection capability of black box data flow tests to other common techniques of test generation from graphs, including simple random sampling, operational profile sampling and state transition coverage.

Keywords: Behavior model, operational profile, random testing, software testing, test data adequacy criteria, transition variation.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Flexibility in Assessment -
An Evaluation of Student Performance

Louise Allsopp
Adelaide University, Adelaide, Australia

louise.allsopp@adelaide.edu.au

The purpose of this paper is to highlight an often-neglected area of teaching, namely assessment of student performance. Many courses now incorporate some form of continual assessment to establish the overall student grade. While the percentage weighting given to continual assessment and the final exam may vary, it is usual that all assessment components are compulsory. This paper reports the results for a course in which a flexible assessment technique is used. The student performance in a mid-term test and weekly seminars is potentially worth 30% of the overall grade with a weight of 70% given to the final exam. However, the final exam is then considered in isolation as potentially worth 100% of the assessment. The student is then awarded the higher grade from the two methods of calculation. This approach proved successful for a university course thus highlighting the importance of assessment technique in the education sector.

Keywords: Student Assessment, Flexibility, Education.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Introducing Information Technology
to Palestinian Schools

Dr. Labib Arafeh
Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Palestine

larafeh@eng.alquds.edu

The paper presents the two perspectives of IT in the Palestinian schools. The basic IT literacy – based courses have been introduced in most of private schools since 1985, and formally started in all public as well private schools in 1999. This covers eight grades from the fifth up to the twelfth. An additional two classes per week have been introduced to the weekly school program. The main objective is to create a new technological-mentality generation that understand, use, explore, and involve in the highly demanded field. Students will be facilitated with the basic IT skills to understand, use, and promote their studies in effectively understanding, searching, reporting, and documenting. Teachers badly need IT paradigms to boost their instructional materials and teaching aids. In addition to the workshops, an Arabic language-based web site will be constructed to assist schoolteachers, administrators, and students etc. in learning technology online an offline. Further more, a collaborative Palestinian School Teachers Network (PSNET), dedicated to support teachers in developing, and enhancing computer-based instructional materials and educational aids.

Using the IT techniques in presenting instructional materials is still in its infant stage. To meet the highly demand in IT profession, higher educational institutions are badly required to update their curriculum and provide their graduates with advanced IT skills.

Keywords: IT, IT Skills, Instructional Material, K-12, Schoolteachers.

 
Technology
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Interaction Support System for
Unlocking Computational
and Informational Resources

Youcef Baghdadi
United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, UAE

y.baghdadi@uaeu.ac.ae

Due to business innovation and IT, information systems (IS) are made up of distributed autonomous subsystems running on heterogeneous IT platforms. These subsystems implement differently same business objects and processes. Thus pieces of data and processes are overlapping and replicated. Moreover, informational and computational resources are locked i.e. they do exist, but they are not accessible.

This paper specifies an interaction-dedicated subsystem of the IS called interaction support system (ISS). It is a support for interactions. It aims to: (1) provide subsystems of IS with a unified and consistent representation of business objects, (2) coordinate processes, and (3) lock data and processes.

An implementation of a web-based business object-oriented ISS, a specialization of the ISS, is made up of four elements: 1) browser used by subsystems to browse and query business objects over the Internet/Intranet, 2) a web server on which run the logic of the ISS, 3) a metadata representing distribution of business objects and processes, and 4) business objects implementations over the subsystems willing to interact.

Keywords: Information System Distribution, Interactions, Cooperation, Coordination, Unlocking Data, Interaction Support System, Web-Based Business Object ISS.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Structured Inquiry for Masters Students:
A ‘Philosophical’ Approach

David A Banks
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

david.banks@unisa.edu.au

Feedback from three Masters courses in which students were required to produce assessments in the form of a ‘balanced argument’ suggested that a significant number of students found this to be an extremely difficult task. It would appear that they had not previously developed the ability to present a balanced and critical view of a topic, instead being more used to presenting a single, uncritical view that typically supported their own view of the issue at hand. Given the rapid growth and availability of information in general the ability to critically reflect on the value of data, information or argument is a skill that increasingly needs to be developed in order that sensible interpretations are applied to that information. This paper outlines an approach based upon the work of two philosophers that will be tested in future versions of the courses to help students explore and develop these skills.

Keywords:  teaching, philosophy, information systems, critical reflection, inquiry

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Using the Web to Serve Students
as Information Clients

Thomas J. Beirne, H. David Brecht, and Eugene H. Sauls
California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

beirne@csus.edu   brecht@csus.edu   sauls@csus.edu

This paper presents an information-client strategy for an academic department’s use of the web. The goals of this strategy are to maintain the department’s range of course offerings in the face of low enrollments and budget constraints, serve different student constituencies, and engage faculty who have diverse web-capabilities and interests in web-sites and web courses. The paper illustrates web-delivery technology that is currently available rather than develop advances in web course or web site methods. Our discussion is based on our experience as accounting educators at a state-supported, commuter campus. We explain the intent of our academic department’s web pages and assess their effectiveness. The paper is developed from the perspective of a Business School’s Accounting Department that primarily teaches Accounting students. It deals with issues and IT capabilities representative of a non-information-technology faculty and non-IT-focused students.

Keywords: faculty, web-pages, academic, cost-effective, web-courses

 
Communications
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Secure Socket Layer

M S.Bhiogade
Patni Computer Services, Mumbai, India

mittal.bhiogade@patni.com or mittalb@hotmail.com

This paper tells about the need for security on the Internet, SSL Protocol, and how a Certificate is used to meet the demand for safe interaction over the Internet.

Keywords: SSL, Certificate, and Certificate Authority.

 
Working Together
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Information Systems in Virtual Corporations: Issues for ERP Based E-business Systems

Samo Bobek, Vojko Potocan,
Simona Sternad, and Heri Spicka
University of Maribor, Slovenia

samo.bobek@uni-mb.si,  vojko.potocan@uni-mb.si,
simona.sternad@uni-mb.si,  heri.spicka@uni-mb.si.

Virtual corporations can be viewed as a network of creative people, resources and ideas connected by inter-organizational information systems and/or by on-line services. Information systems makes virtual corporations more successful, because the communication and collaboration among dispersed business partners are key to making it happen. Virtual corporations can use different information systems on different technological platforms. In the paper we will discuss the possibilities for informational support of the Cupertino between partners within virtual corporations with focus on enterprise resource planning solutions, which became more and more important.

Keywords: virtual corporations, business networking, e-business, enterprise resource planning, workflow systems, computer supported co-operative work

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Applying Educational Research to Improve Teaching and Learning in Information Systems

Ilona Box
University of Western Sydney, Quakers Hill, Australia

i.box@uws.edu.au

Universities need to respond to a change in student profile from the traditional academically committed student to a student who seeks a qualification for a job. This study reports on the application of educational research to the redesign of a single subject (or course). The aims were to engage students in deep learning; increase a learner's responsibility for learning; and encourage better study practices; improve teaching and subject objectives, and authenticate and validate the assessment method. Statistical results presented indicate that the aims were to some extent achieved. Several further improvements and research are identified.

Keywords: Information systems teaching and education, formative, summative and continuous assessment, assessment validity and reliability, course objectives.

 
Community and Society
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Beyond Privacy: The Ethics of
Customer Information Systems

Gordon Boyce
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Email: gboyce@efs.mq.edu.au

The rise of an ostensibly customer-centred corporate culture in the 1980s recogised the importance of “knowing the customer”.  As a result, customer information systems and associated practices of marketing, customer segmentation, and customer accounting have become significant elements in corporate customer-focus strategies.  This paper discusses a range of ethical considerations that flow from the use of customer information systems and critically examines these systems in their organisational and social context.  It is well-recognised that customer information systems give rise to concerns of privacy, but this paper raises perhaps more important ethical issues that relate to organisational transformation and significant links to issues of access, equity, alienation, and social exclusion. 

Keywords: Databases, Customer Focus, Accounting, Marketing, Social Exclusion

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

A Template-based Approach to Online Content Delivery: An Alternative to Blackboard

Gerald F. Braun and Elaine A. Crable
Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Braun@xu.edu   Crable@xu.edu

As student access to computers and the Internet becomes more commonplace, professors have come to rely on a variety of tools to deliver course materials for both classroom-based and distance learning courses.  Software products such as WebCT, Learning Space, and Blackboard are among the most popular.  They all provide the instructor with an easy-to-use environment for delivering content and communicating with students.  This paper gives a brief overview of these three products along with a detailed description of an HTML template approach as an alternative to the more costly software tools.  Comparisons are made to Blackboard as a representative product based on seven criteria – general design, setup, delivery of materials, interaction, assessment, support and security, and site maintenance.  Advantages and disadvantages are discussed.

Keywords: Content Delivery, Blackboard, e-Learning

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

The Joint Accounting/e-Business Technology Major: An Interdisciplinary Approach
to Curriculum Development

Vince Brenner, Ted Surynt,
Fred Augustine, Judson Stryker 
Stetson University, DeLand, FL, USA

vbrenner@stetson.edu tsurynt@stetson.edu
faugusti@stetson.edu jstryker@stetson.edu

The promise and potential of the new business paradigm labeled “e-business” is the driving force behind the tremendous demand for accounting professionals with both a technology background and a traditional accounting background. Where will these professionals come from? This paper lays out in detail the foundation for a new undergraduate academic program which is designed to both attract students and to provide them with the skill set necessary to succeed in this new e-business universe – the Joint Accounting/e-Business Technology major. Course content for this undergraduate major is based on a set of courses designed to integrate concepts and technologies necessary for an understanding of the infrastructure that supports e-business. Students, recruiters, and faculty will appreciate the distinct competitive advantages offered by this unique program.

Keywords: Accounting, Electronic-Business, Technology, Undergraduate, Curriculum

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Moving and Growing Together – Delivering Education in the New Millennium

Renay Buchanan
Central Queensland University,
Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia

r.buchanan@cqu.edu.au 

This paper describes the challenges experienced by Academics and Instructional Designers when creating quality, innovative and accessible educational materials for the University sector in 2001 and beyond. 

These two roles, which play a crucial part in the development and delivery of the new educational experience, are vital to the success of the student and ultimately, the University.  Are we exploiting these roles to their full potential? It is currently the trend to place the burden of the instructional design, along with the plethora of other tasks, on the academic due to the lack of investment in instructional design and teamwork. 

Is the demand to create fast, easy and inexpensive courses now resting predominantly on academics when their main role should be as a content expert and not instructional designer?  Are we getting it right?   Can we do it better?

Keywords: Instructional design, Education, Innovation, Delivering education, Academic, Workloads.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Student Attitudes to MIS Content in an MBA: A Comparison across Countries

Stephen Burgess
Victoria University,  Australia

Golam M Chowdhury
Victoria University  International, Bangladesh

Arthur Tatnall
Victoria University,  Australia

Stephen.Burgess@vu.edu.au   gmc@accesstel.net   
Arthur.Tatnall@vu.edu.au

Export education forms a major part of the Australian economy. Australian universities are now not only accepting overseas students into Australian campuses; they are setting up overseas-based campuses. This is often through an arrangement with a local educational institution or organisation. Subjects in these institutions are delivered by a combination of Victoria University Australian-based staff and local faculty. One of the primary programs being delivered overseas by many Australian institutions is the Master of Business Administration (MBA). This paper examines the delivery of the core information technology units, Management Information Systems (MIS), by Victoria University in Australia and overseas (in Bangladesh). The structure of the MBA at Victoria University in Australia and overseas is examined and the MIS subject explained. Results of a survey of MBA students’ views of the content of MIS, conducted in Australia (1997-2000) and Bangladesh (2001) are reported. There is little difference in the attitudes of students of both countries in relation to the topics covered in the subject, nor on the breakdown of the subject between ‘hands-on’ applications and more formal instruction. There are some differences in relation to the level of Internet and e-mail usage, with Australian students tending to use these technologies on a greater basis as a proportion of their overall computer usage.

Keywords: Computers, information technology, management information systems, MBA programs, management education, developing countries

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W8                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

One Size Does Not Fit All:
Critical and Timely Issues in Computer Centered Curriculum Development
a Panel Discussion

Wm. H. Burkett
Palm Beach College, West Palm Beach, FL, USA
burkettw@pbac.edu

Linda V. Knight, DePaul University, USA lknight@cti.depaul.edu

Gail Griswold Burkett, Palm Beach Community College, USA griswolg@pbcc.cc.fl.us

Thorne Donnelley Jr., Palm Beach Atlantic College, USA thorned@bellsouth.net

Ian Newman, Loughborough University, United Kingdom I.A.Newman@lboro.ac.uk

The rapidly changing environment of the information age and the need to provide a well-rounded education, often times, are diametrically opposed.   Local, regional, national, and international industry needs and pressures interact with school and discipline tradition.  The basic requirements of a school’s degree often account for over half of the courses required for graduation.  Administrations often do not know the difference between the parallel degrees of Computer Information and Information Technology or the complexities of Computer Science as opposed to Informing Science, thus complicating the process.  The key question is “does one size fit all” when it comes to determining what a computer centered curriculum should be for a given school of higher education and to what extent do outside influences affect curriculum decisions.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

A Case Study of Social and Corporate Responsibility in Bridging the Digital Divide

Tom Butler
University College Cork, Ireland.

tbutler@afis.ucc.ie

Being on the wrong side of the digital divide limits the life chances of the socially excluded, who have had neither the wherewithal nor the opportunity to obtain highly paid, skilled positions in IT. Irish policy makers see education as the solution to this problem. However, providing institutional support for third level education in IT for the socially disadvantaged poses significant challenges. This paper describes these problems and explains how they were overcome in implementing an undergraduate university course. This diploma course has been an unqualified success has achieved its objectives and those of the policy makers who instituted it. However, what made it so was the commitment of concerned stakeholders, from members of the executive steering committee who developed and implemented the course, to the lecturers who delivered it, and the students who participated in it.

Keywords: Digital Divide, Commitment, Education, IT

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

International Internet Based Video Conferencing in Distance Education: A Low-Cost Option

Graeme Byrne and Lorraine Staehr
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia                     

g.byrne@bendigo.latrobe.edu.au  l.staehr@bendigo.latrobe.edu.au

Higher education institutions in Australia are increasingly embracing the Internet as a tool to support academic programs offered in the Asian region. The purpose of this study is to describe a low cost internet-based international video conferencing system and to assess staff attitudes toward its use to deliver lectures and tutorials to Hong Kong. The students are enrolled in undergraduate business programs at a regional campus of an Australian university.  The video conferencing system is used to deliver around 50% of the course content with the remainder delivered in “face-to-face” mode requiring the lecturer concerned to travel to Hong Kong. To evaluate the use of the videoconferencing system, semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff involved in the program. The results revealed an overall positive attitude toward the technology itself, but revealed some shortcomings in its effectiveness as a teaching tool.

Keywords: Internet, desktop videoconferencing, distance education, staff perceptions.

 
Community and Society
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Information Privacy Issues in the Information Age

Netiva Caftori
Northeastern Illinois University,
Chicago, IL, USA

Steve Teicher
University of Central Florida,
Orlando, Fl, USA

N-Caftori@neiu.edu     Steve-Teicher@att.net

Information privacy is the primary issue discussed in the majority of papers about e-commerce security. We observed and confirmed from literature that while privacy is a voiced concern of consumers, it is not the insurmountable barrier to doing business. There are other information accuracy and operational issues that add or detract from consumer experience. We will discuss these using real-life anecdotes.

Keywords: information privacy, security, trust, convenience, continuous observation, real-life anecdotes

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Developing a Model of Student Learning in a Studio-Based Teaching Environment

Angela Carbone and Judy Sheard
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Angela.Carbone@infotech.monash.edu.au  Judy.Sheard@infotech.monash.edu.au

This paper evaluates a studio based teaching model in a core first year subject of a traditionally delivered IT degree. It reports on first year students’ reactions to four aspects of the studio-based teaching and learning environment; the physical learning space, IT tools and infrastructure, teaching philosophy and portfolio assessment.  Data was obtained through online Web-based surveys, issued mid-year and at the end of the year.  The surveys were used to construct a model of students' satisfaction, including what influences the students’ use of the new environment and their perceptions of its value to their learning.  Results revealed various factors that influence the students' satisfaction of studio-based teaching.  Students found the studio precinct an inviting and comfortable place to learn; however, although students appreciated the working environment they were continuously frustrated with endless IT-related problems.  Students' comments indicate the teaching environment facilitated collaboration, and by the end of the year they began to see the course as being better integrated.  An unexpected finding was the evidence of students developing metacognitive skills via portfolio assessment.

Keywords: evaluation, studio-based teaching and learning model, portfolio assessment

 
Other
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Towards the Project of an
Open Catalogue of Manuscripts

Antonio Cartelli and Marco Palma
University of Cassino, Italy

cartan@officine.it
mpalma@unicas.it

After an introduction and a short description of the research methods usually adopted in scientific disciplines and particularly in palaeography, some hypotheses on the influence of new technologies on human learning and some examples of the use of Web technologies in manuscript cataloguing are proposed. The reasons for the project of an information system adopting Web technologies for manuscripts cataloguing are then reported and the meaning of an open catalogue strictly related to the above information system is presented. The project is applied to a concrete example to show one of the possible ways the information system can be used by the palaeographers' community and, more in general, by scientific community. The paper ends with the proposal of long term publishing hypotheses for materials collected within the database of the open catalogue.

Keywords: manuscript, palaeography, catalogue, Web, database, information system.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Web Technologies and Sciences Epistemologies

Antonio Cartelli
University of Cassino, Cassino (FR), Italy

cartan@officine.it

The paper reports first of all the results of several studies on misconceptions and mental schemes many researchers carried out in different disciplines and several countries. At the end of this section an overview of open questions and unresolved problems concerning knowledge construction is reported. The paper continues describing the different ways computers entered in education and how they were used to help students in overcoming their difficulties. At last a snapshot of the influence of the Internet phenomenon on the educational processes follows. The last sections propose the analysis of two experiences the author made up with the use of Web technologies and suggest the adoption of an Information system to hit the following target: to improve the everyday work of teachers, to help students in overcoming their wrong ideas, to deepen the analysis of students' ideas and attitudes when they approach scientific disciplines and to redefine the relations existing among the disciplines involved in the study of teaching/learning processes.

Keywords: misconceptions, mental schemes, meaningful learning, Web technologies, database, knowledge monitoring

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

The Digital Divide in Western Europe:
Problems and Prospects

Rod Carveth
Texas Tech University, Lubbock,
TX, USA

docrod99@hotmail.com

Susan B. Kretchmer
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

susankretchmer@yahoo.com

This paper reviews the digital divide in Western Europe, as well as policy options for combating that divide.  While age, income and gender are significant predictors of the digital divide in Western Europe, geography plays a crucial role.  The countries in Southern Europe have less computer and Internet penetration than their Northern European counterparts.  The paper then discusses four policy options for combating the divide, suggesting that the most effective solution would be private/public partnerships.

Keywords: digital divide, diffusion, Internet, policy

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Epistemology of Science, Science Literacy, and the Demarcation Criterion: The Nature of Science (NOS) and Informing Science (IS) in Context

Teresa Castelão-Lawless
Grand Valley State University

castelat@gvsu.edu

The result of misunderstanding science by students is their inability as future citizens to impact science public policies. The solution argued last year included creating courses in science studies serving two purposes: destroy students’ stereotypical certainties about science and help them become “historical realists” in regard to scientific practices. But we also speculated that dismissing the myth of scientific objectivity and teaching the historical and sociological underpinnings of science might lead to turning students into epistemological relativists. We now have a solution to the social-constructivist trap stemming from studies of science. This paper inquires into American contexts such as scientific illiteracy, post-modernism in high schools and colleges, and the media, all of which help produce a generalized inability to demarcate science from pseudoscience. Science studies courses guide students into both making epistemological distinctions and understanding the nature of science. Informing methodologies, course format, and bibliography follow.

Key words: demarcation science/pseudoscience; epistemology of science; nature of scientific practice; scientific illiteracy; pedagogical methods

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Integrating Intelligent Methodological
and Tutoring Assistance in a CASE Platform:
The PANDORA Experience

Elena Castro, Dolores Cuadra,
Paloma Martinez, and Ana Iglesias
University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain

ecastro@inf.uc3m.es   dcuadra@inf.uc3m.es   pmf@inf.uc3m.es  aiglesia@inf.uc3m.es

Database Design discipline involves so different aspects as conceptual and logical modelling knowledge or domain understanding. That implies a great effort to carry out the real world abstraction task and represent it through a data model. CASE tools emerge in order to automating the database development process. These platforms try to help to the database designer in different database design phases. Nevertheless, this tools are frequently mere diagrammers and do not carry completely out the design methodology that they are supposed to support; furthermore, they do not offer intelligent methodological advice to novice designers.

This paper introduces the PANDORA tool (acronym of Platform for Database Development and Learning via Internet) that is being developed in a research project which tries to mitigate some of the deficiencies observed in several CASE tools, defining methods and techniques for database development which are useful for students and practitioners. Specifically, this work is focused on two PANDORA components: Conceptual Modelling and Learning Support subsystems.

Keywords: CASE tools, Database Design Methodologies, Intelligent Tutoring systems.

 
Journalism
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Pop-Science on the Internet:
How ULISSE Makes the Ends Meet

Simona Cerrato
International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA),
Trieste, Italy

simona@medialab.sissa.it

There is an increasing demand for what we can call pop-science that is pertinent scientific information dedicated to the non-specialists. This demand comes both from professional categories and the general public. Simultaneously in the scientific community there is an increasing consciousness that diffusion of the scientific information is an asset the scientific community cannot afford to overlook.

The Internet is a perfect tool to meet this demand. It reaches a large and ever-increasing number of people and permits an interactive and detailed exchange of information. As an experiment of how to combine high quality services and the information technology, we have set up Ulisse - In the net of science (http://ulisse.sissa.it), an innovative Italian project for the popularisation of science via the Internet. Its main purpose is to establish a connection between scientists and the general public. Ulisse is based on three major characteristics: a) high technology to create an efficient and friendly system, b) customisation of the services, c) a network of scientists, which guaranteed the quality of the materials.

Keywords: communication of science, science education, e-learning, web and database interface

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

The Changing Ecology of IT Management: Cross-Disciplinary Explorations of Context and Content

Elia V. Chepaitis
Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA

echepaitis@mail.fairfield.edu

In the past decade, the context of Information Technology (IT) management changed in seminal areas:  the circle of players, the tools, the emergence of Internet technologies, the evolution of information societies and digital economies, and critical questions of ethics and equity. 

These seismic changes can be captured if corresponding shifts occur in the content and context of IT education. A shift in context alters courses, methods, and materials but also the curriculum itself.  The author identifies a variety of projects that immerse students in the altered ecologies of IT management and of IT education. The paper describes one of these projects--a student-authored proposal for a textbook on international information systems.  

Keywords:  international, student-authored, ecology, soft factors, infrastructure, cross-disciplinary, socio-economic, textbook proposal

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Reusable and Usable Environment
for the Digital Courseware Domain

Elsabé Cloete & Paula Kotzé
University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa

cloete@unisa.ac.za      kotzep@unisa.ac.za

This paper considers a functional framework that creates a usable authoring support environment (ASE) for digital course design, and outputs reusable components.  Within the context of considering the courseware domain as a domain of interactive software systems, we developed an ASE prototype.  The objectives of this prototype include the provision of a usable authoring tool to develop interactive courseware, as well as the creation of domain products that are based on open standards to foster large-scale reuse of these products.  In this paper we describe the software architecture of the prototype, based on usability requirements.

Keywords: domain modelling, e-learning, reuse, usability

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Seeking Meaning: The Educationally Critical
Aspect of Learning about Information Systems

Chris Cope
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia

c.cope@latrobe.edu.au

The research reported in this paper investigated and compared the experience of learning about the concept of an information system (IS) at a scholarly, and an undergraduate level. A scholarly level learning experience was developed from the literature and represented a benchmark against which students’ learning experiences could be compared. A group of undergraduate students’ learning experiences were investigated in an empirical, phenomenographic study. An awareness and understanding of the process of seeking meaning was found to be an educationally critical aspect of a deep approach to learning about IS and a deep understanding of the concept of an IS. The finding has important implications for teaching and learning about IS. Learning tasks can be designed which aim to enhance learning through focussing students’ awareness simultaneously on the IS conceptual and learning aspects of seeking meaning. An example of the use of rich pictures to achieve this aim is given.

Keywords: IS education, student perspectives, phenomenographic research, information systems, learning approaches

 
Other
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Priorities Assignment for Information Systems
Based on TODIM Multicriteria Method

The paper presents how to select modules of an information system, applying a multicriteria decision approach, using the interactive multicriteria decision making method - TODIM. The problem is to assign priorities for information modules in the planning stage of information systems. These priorities should be attributed in agreement with the decision makers’ preferences, considering the impact on strategic factors and operational aspects of processes, as examples of criteria.

The TODIM method is based on the prospect theory and has the technical resources to minimise the possibility of occurrence of the reversion order. It also allows the multicriteria decision approach a group of interdependent actions; this method uses the additive difference model to determine the ranking of an alternative over another one.

An analytical structure is proposed to incorporate the multicriteria TODIM method, integrated with the information system planning methodology. Strategic factors and operational aspects of processes are integrated.

Keywords: Information systems priorities, TODIM method, Multicriteria decision

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Language Trends in
Introductory Programming Courses

Michael de Raadt, Richard Watson and Mark Toleman
University of Southern Queensland, Australia

deraadt@usq.edu.au    rwatson@usq.edu.au   markt@usq.edu.au

Deciding what to teach novice programmers about programming and, in particular, which programming language to teach to novice programmers, and how to teach it, is a common topic for debate within universities.  Should an industry relevant programming language be taught, or should a language designed for teaching novices be used? In order to design tools and methodologies for the teaching of novice programmers it is important to uncover what is being taught, and in turn, what will be taught in the future.  A census of introductory programming courses administered within all Australian universities has been undertaken.  The census aimed to reveal not only what computer programming languages are being taught, but also how they are being taught.  From the results of this census two key factors emerged: perceived industry pressure for graduates with certain language skills versus academic training for generic programming skills.

Keywords: novice programming, teaching programming languages

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Benefit, Monitoring & Evaluation System:
A Case Study of Malaysian Technical Education System

Aziz Deraman 
Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia

Syahrul Fahmy 
Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia

M. Naim Yaakub
Ministry of Education, Malaysia

A. Aziz Jemain 
Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia

a.d@pkrisc.cc.ukm.my  sfahmy@taninet.com.my  naim@jptek.moe.gov.my   azizj@pkrisc.cc.ukm.my

This paper presents a case study of the Malaysian technical education system. The Technical and Vocational Department (TVED) is designated to prepare skilled technical and intelligent workforce to Malaysia in order to meet the goals of Vision 2020. For that reason, a web-based management support system is proposed to TVED for its planning, management and decision-making activities. e-BME is a system for education monitoring and evaluation by means of establishing internal and external efficiency indicators. e-BME would receive input mainly from Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) schools and graduates. There are four types of reports that are generated by the system: Management, Financial, Research and Planning. TVED could use these reports in its policy and decision-making activities. This system promotes faster data collection, higher integrity of generated information and a systematic channel for distribution of reports.

Keywords: Education Monitoring, Education Evaluation, Internal Efficiency, External Efficiency,  Management Support System

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Using OPNET to Enhance Student Learning
in a Data Communications Course

Michael W Dixon and Terry W Koziniec
Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

m.dixon@murdoch.edu.au    t.koziniec@murdoch.edu.au

It is difficult to teach data communications because it involves complex, dynamic processes which are not visible to students and are hard for them to conceptualise. This paper describes a project to improve the learning of students enrolled in the data communications courses. In this project the traditional mode of teaching data communications was supplemented by a problem solving approach using OPNETÒ a software environment for modelling, simulating, and analyzing the performance of communications networks. This mode of teaching enabled students to gain experience solving real world data communications problems without requiring the University to invest heavily in communications hardware and software which would quickly become obsolete.

Keywords:  Data communications, discrete network simulation

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

A Multi-Agent Architecture and Protocol
for Knowledge Production: A Case Study for Participative Development of Learning Objects

Juan Manuel Dodero, Ignacio Aedo,
and Paloma Díaz-Pérez
Laboratorio DEI, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

dodero@inf.uc3m.es  aedo@ia.uc3m.es  pdp@inf.uc3m.es

In a distributed eLearning environment, the development of learning objects is a participative task. We consider learning objects as knowledge pieces, which are subject to the management processes of acquisition, delivery, creation and production. A multiple-tier architecture for participative knowledge production tasks is introduced, where knowledge-producing agents are arranged into knowledge domains or marts, and a distributed interaction protocol is used to consolidate knowledge that is produced in a mart. Knowledge consolidated in a given mart can be in turn negotiated in higher-level foreign marts. The proposed architecture and protocol are applied to coordinate the development of learning objects by a distributed group of authors. 

Keywords: multi-agent systems, knowledge management, learning objects.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Into the New Millennium:
Why do Students Decide to Study IT?

Sandra Downes
Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

s.downes@murdoch.edu.au

The shortage of Information Technology (IT) professionals is a recognised world wide problem.  During the last ten to fifteen years we have seen the introduction of computers into high school and also primary school.  These computers are now being used, not only as an adjunct to school subjects, but for the study of IT as a subject in its own right.  As we begin this new millennium, this study aims to discover if these changes in curriculum are affecting students’ decisions to become IT professionals.  A survey was administered to a group of students, undertaking an IT programme of study, to examine the IT subjects they completed in high school and the effect these subjects had on their decision to study IT.  The literature suggests that gender is an important constructs in students’ decision to study IT and so this variables were examined also.

Keywords: curriculum, gender, high school, IT career.

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Using Keywords
to Improve the Display of a Search Results List

Offer Drori
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

offerd@cc.huji.ac.il

This article presents the results of a comparative study of various user interfaces used to obtain search results from textual databases. This study is one of a series carried out at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It focuses on the display of text elements in search results and their impact on user behavior. The findings indicate several distinct benefits in the interface developed for the experiment, in which the search results display consists of the document title, keywords, and several lines from the text that fulfill the search criteria. These user benefits include ease of use, increased confidence that the parameters defined for the search query will yield the correct results and allow successful completion of the task, and satisfaction with the relevance of the information displayed.

Keywords: search results, using keywords, displaying list, information retrieval

 
Communications
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Global Information Technology Management

Sudesh M. Duggal
Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, USA

Duggals@nku.edu

Globalization is the perception of the world as one big market place.  The notion of the boundariless world is expected to produce dramatic changes in key markets, major competitors, and Information Technology products. As a result, organizations are encouraged to rise above the national boundaries and change their orientation to global corporations.  Further, the increased spending in Global Information Technology, which is anticipated to grow several folds within the next five years, is adding fuel to this shift.  Events such as economic integration of Europe, merging of the companies across national borders, stock exchanges, outsourcing of Information Technology services to the third world countries, and the use of World Wide Web are forcing companies to re-evaluate their Global Information Technology management and to develop Global Information Strategy so as to get the most out of their business in the world economy.

As the scope of Global Information Technology spans the global market, it is going to present mangers with a host of thorny issues.  This paper suggests the key issues to be used as a guide for the Global Information Technology Managers to be successful in this fast changing technology oriented market, and also recommends Global Managers Evaluation Wheel which can be used for the appraisal of managers, subordinates, peer managers, on-site supervisors and clients working in the global Information Technology environment.

Keywords: Global Information Technology, Global Information Strategy, And Global Managers Evaluation Wheel

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Impact of Taking Information
Technology Exams Using Open Notes

Doris Duncan
California State University, Hayward, CA, USA

dduncan@csuhayward.edu

This paper summarizes findings of teaching four sections of the same college course in the same style with one exception.  Section 1, 3, and 4 had notes available for reference during the final exam whereas Section 2 did not.  The author’s hypothesis that students in the 3 sections using notes would perform significantly better than Section 2 on the exam was disproved.

Keywords:  IT Education, CIS Education, IS Education, IRM Education

 
Working Together
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Reflections on Communication Processes and Virtual Teams by Lecturer and Student Cohort: a Case Study

This paper explores processes and outcomes from virtual teamwork in a university course in Human-Computer Interaction. The course has students both on- and off-campus, with a very wide geographic distribution. The novel approach adopted in the course organized students into both small teams (three students) and into larger units (a group of six teams). Teams worked collaboratively, using a variety of communication channels: email, chat groups, face-to-face, and phone. Each team was responsible for preparing a power-point presentation that incorporated human-computer interaction design principles, that was then critiqued by other teams in their ‘group’.  Overall, students’ experiences were extremely positive and recognized learning that contributed to course goals and effective virtual teamwork. Reflections on the processes involved in successful teamwork indicated that important factors included clear goals for the team, good task organization, similar personal achievement goals among team member, reliability and efficiency, open communication styles, and respect and understanding for others in the team.

Keywords: virtual teams, communication, assessment, distance learning, human-computer interaction.

 
Working Together
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Information for Decision Support,
Information for Performance Evaluation
– But Don’t Mix Your Drinks

J. E. Everett, M. Kamperman, T. J. Howard
The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

jeverett@ecel.uwa.edu.au

When the same information is used to support decisions and to evaluate performance, a falsely optimistic view of performance may result. An example occurs in quality control during ship loading for iron ore export. Ore quality depends upon consistent composition. Ore is sampled periodically during reclamation from stockpiles. The ship loader was moved from between source stockpiles when the sample assays differed from target composition. Each ship loader move incurred costly delays.

We found the apparent variations in composition could be largely ascribed to measurement error, and that intended correction during ship loading might even be harming quality.

The policy was changed, to load ships from a single stockpile without interruption. Sample assays were used to evaluate performance, not to drive decisions. Data are analyzed from 466 shiploads, spanning the years before and after the change of policy, to compare quality performance, as measured by the exporter and by the customer.

Keywords: MIS, DSS, Mining, Quality Control, Performance Evaluation

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

IT in Education Organization:
A Strategic Planning Approach

Syahrul Fahmy, Abdul Razak Hamdan & Aziz Deraman
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia

sfahmy@taninet.com.my, arh@sun1.ftsm.ukm.my, ad@sun1.ftsm.ukm.my

Information Technology (IT) has significant impacts to modern organizations especially in assisting daily operations and meeting business targets. Main contributions of IT to organizations are increased efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness. Non-profit organizations can also benefit as much as for-profit organizations from IT. Education Organizations (EOs) for example, would benefit in terms of effective management of assets, improved communication channels, management of education system changes and systematic dissemination of academic materials. This paper proposes an IT Strategic Planning (ITSP) framework for EOs in order to plan and manage IT-related resources. The framework comprises of five phases namely Strategic Direction, Analysis, Strategy, Implementation and Evaluation. End result of this process would be the ITSP Manual, a detailed documentation of the organization’s strategic direction, its environment and specific action plans to achieve business targets. This manual can be used in policy and decision-making activities.

Keywords: IT Strategic Planning, Education Organization, Framework, Decision-Making, Competitive Advantage.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Use of Applet and Servlet Communication
Technique to Administer Online Examinations

Daniel J. Farkas and Narayan Murthy
Pace University, Pleasantville, NY, USA

dfarkas@pace.edu  nmurthy@pace.edu

Internet and Java technology have developed enormously in recent years.  These dramatic developments have provided opportunities and challenges in all fields, particularly in the field of education.  What we could not imagine doing just a couple years back has been made possible by these technologies.  This short paper illustrates one such example.  The example we will discuss is an examination system that a student takes online.  When done, the system displays his/her score, and stores the name of the student and his/her score in a file on the server.  By clicking another button the students can see answers to all the questions.  The way we have done, all the processing is done on the client side and then the result and the name are sent to the server.  The server stores the name and score of the student in a file on the server.

A Java applet does the client side computation and a Java Servlet does the processing on the server side.  The paper illustrates the power of applet servlet communication.

Keywords: Java Applets, Java Servlets, Ecommerce, CGI Scripts, Perl, HTML, Web, Online assessment

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Implementing an Interdisciplinary Masters
Program in Internet Technology and E-Commerce

Daniel J. Farkas and Narayan Murthy
Pace University, Pleasantville, NY, USA

dfarkas@pace.edu  nmurthy@pace.edu

The explosion of the Internet has lead to a revolutionary way of doing business. Electronic commerce is currently estimated at $30 billion, but analysts predict that figure to grow to $400 billion by the year 2002.  This leads to a tremendous need for skilled personnel who can handle both the technical and business aspects of e-commerce.  One magazine article heading reads: "Looking for a New Job?  Head for the Web."  A recent announcement by U.S. Small Business Administration states that lack of technical expertise and lack of qualified IT employees are two of the major E-Commerce obstacles facing small firms.

Working with the existing administrative infrastructure, Pace University's School of Computer Science and Information Systems has designed an interdisciplinary program, Master of Science in Information Technologies for Electronic Commerce.  This short paper is an overview of the M.S. program.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

A Formal Approach to the
Teaching of Abstract Data Types

Laura Felice, Liliana Martinez, and Claudia Pereira 
Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Tandil, Argentina

Lfelice@exa.unicen.edu.ar   lmartine@exa.unicen.edu.ar  cpereira@exa.unicen.edu.ar

In this paper we present a methodology for the teaching of programming applied to an elementary course of the System Engineering career at the Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. This methodology starts with the formal specifications of abstract data types and concludes with an implementation of an efficient algorithm in C++ language.  We describe the methodology, and a case of study showing the proposed methodology.

Keywords: algorithm design techniques; formal specifications; programming teaching.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

An Instructional Model for
Teaching Troubleshooting Skills

Peter Fenrich
British Columbia Institute of Technology,
Burnaby, Canada

peter_fenrich@bcit.ca

It is typically difficult or impractical to teach troubleshooting skills in a classroom or lab setting. A computer-based training software package was designed and developed to teach students the problematic skill of how to troubleshoot malfunctions in hydronic heating systems. A summative evaluation was needed to ascertain whether the skills learned on the computer would transfer to the real world. The results of this study show that the instructional model used in teaching learners how to troubleshoot hydronic heating systems was effective (p < 0.001). Learners were able to transfer what they learned on the computer to real systems. Students can effectively learn these troubleshooting skills through CD-ROM delivery without instructor intervention. It is hypothesized that this unique instructional model can be used to teach other troubleshooting skills. This paper describes the initial project and discusses the summative evaluation results.

Keywords: instructional design, computer-based training, multimedia, troubleshooting, CD-ROM

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Mid-Career Employees Embracing
Technology (MEET):  A Case Study

The importance of information technology (IT) for modern business and, indeed, research in general cannot be questioned, as its sheer pervasiveness adequately attests. However, simplistic views of technological utopianism are now being offset by accounts of technological dystopianism. Clearly organizational management have wholeheartedly subscribed to an IT future as a staggering 41 percent of total capital expenditure in US organizations currently goes on IT. However, organizations face enormous difficulty in trying to achieve successful training programmes in the use of IT.  This research study involved the construction and implementation of an IT training programme for mid-career employees in a large multinational organization. Davis (1989) identified two constructs as relevant to user acceptance of technology, namely ease of use (EOU) and perceived usefulness (PU). These constructs were operationalised into a set of principles to underpin the training programme which was delivered in two phases, each specifically addressing one of Davis’ constructs.

Keywords: Information Technology, IT Training Constructs, Web-based Training.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Informing Potential Computing Students

Marilyn Ford and Jenny Morice
Griffith University, Nathan, Australia

M.Ford@cit.gu.edu.au   J.Morice@cit.gu.edu.au

Two studies were conducted to examine the expectations computing students had held before they commenced their degree.  We examined whether reality matched their expectations, how and whether they had tried to obtain information before enrolling in their degree, and how they were coping with their studies.  Results showed that, for many students, reality did not match their expectations even when they had obtained information about their proposed degree.  This often led to resentment and frustration.  Solutions to this complex problem are proposed.

Keywords: information technology, multimedia, student expectations

 
Technology
in Room W7                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Issues and Opportunities in
Digital Rights Management

Abbas Foroughi, Marvin Albin, and Sharlett Gillard
University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, USA

aforoughi@usi.edu  malbin@usi.edu  sgillard@usi.edu

In the wake of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, of 1998, Digital Rights Management systems are beginning to provide copyright protection for digital content which magazine and book publishers, music  companies, software and game producers, and business-to-business participants place online. Creators and providers of digital content are now increasingly able to control end users’ use of, and accessibility to, their products and stand to gain huge profits from this capability. However, as DRM technologies evolve and develop, so does end user concern about restrictions to their access to, and use of, information. The DRM industry will have to provide a balance between fair compensation for the creators of digital content and the rights of end-users to access and use the information they need.

Keywords: Digital Rights Management, e-Business, copyright protection

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Education of Overall IT System Design:
Locally Situated E-business

Yoshinori Fujio
Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Kumamoto, Japan

fujio@pu-kumamoto.ac.jp

The paper presents an overall, practicing educational model for designing IT systems for undergraduates. Students are awaked to the target consideration to learn IT in familiar cases, and they are motivated to design IT systems. A unifying theme is established, students execute investigation, research, and designing to achieve that theme. [Locally situated E-business] is taken up in this paper. In order to investigate, to research, and to design the theme, four groups are organized. Each group has its own sub-theme; investigation of business model, designing of client/server system, designing of mobile system, and designing of human interface. As the result of these practices, they are able to obtain a total IT image and an individual designing method. Students can approach the essence of IT through these processes.

Keywords: IT system design, E-business, information systems, undergraduate, education

 
Communications
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

The Lack of Communication and the Need of IT for Supply-Chain Management Strategies in SMEs

G. Fulantelli, M. Allegra, A.Z.P. Vitrano 
Italian National Research Council,
Institute for Educational Technologies
Palermo, Italy

fulantelli@itdf.pa.cnr.it   allegro@itdf.pa.cnr.it   avitrano@itdf.pa.cnr.it

The term “Supply Chain Management” (SCM) denotes the creation, integration, planning and control of all elements of universal added-value chains, from the procurement of raw materials to the final delivery to the customer. IT offer huge potentials for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises to activate effective SCM mechanisms. Even though experts estimate the potential saving that can be achieved through the implementation of effective SCM strategies at 3-5 per cent of turnover, SMEs are experiencing a great deal of difficulty in coping with these strategies. Reasons for this, especially among small enterprises (50 employees and under), are to be found in the specific enterprise culture. The results presented in this paper are the outcome of an EU funded project named “Supply Chain Partnership”, a pilot project aimed at analysing the communication, social and technological obstacles to the implementation of effective SCM strategies in SMEs. The focus of this paper is on the Italian experience, and concerns an industrial district located in Sicily.

Keywords: Supply-Chain Management, Information Technologies, SMEs, Communication, Cooperation.

 
Other
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Evaluation of New Technology
Implementation via POC Analysis

Masaru Furukawa
Toyama University, Toyama City, Japan.

frukawa@eco.toyama-u.ac.jp

In recent years the evolution of highly developed and complicated computerization has boosted the importance to business of IT infrastructure. Enhancement of business agility is not possible unless greater flexibility is built into IT infrastructure. More often than not, MIS’s today are not flexible enough in this sense to agilely accommodate demands for system change incessantly confronting them.

We have been focusing our research on MIS flexibility, its evaluation and the development of methodology for its enhancement. This paper aims to present a comparative evaluation via POC (penalty of change) analysis of system alternatives involving a case of new technology implementation. To start with, we will define the concept of MIS flexibility. We will then describe an actual case of technology implementation and define the problem it involved and go on to illustrate the evaluation of MIS flexibility via POC analysis.

Keyword: Management information systems, MIS evaluation, MIS flexibility, IT infrastructure, penalty of change

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

COLORS for Programming:
A System to Support the Learning of Programming

Stuart Garner
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

s.garner@ecu.edu.au

Learning introductory software development is a difficult task and students often perceive programming subjects as requiring significantly more work than others. This paper describes a learning model for programming that has its basis in cognitive load theory. This theory suggests that there are three types of cognitive load that learners experience: intrinsic which is determined by the mental demands of the domain of knowledge; extraneous which is generated by the instructional format used in the teaching and learning process; and germane which can be utilised by learners to engage in conscious processing.

The learning model is used as a basis, together with a particular instructional design framework, for the development of “COLORS (Cognitive Load Reduction System) for Programming”. COLORS is described together with a software tool, CORT (Code Restructuring Tool), that has been developed by the author to support various aspects of COLORS.

Keywords: cognitive load theory; programming; instructional design; code restructuring.

 
Justice, Law and Public Policy
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Database Protection: Are Laws Threatening
To Destroy Our Building Blocks Of Knowledge?

Julia Alpert Gladstone
Bryant College, Smithfield, RI, USA

jgladsto@bryant.edu

This paper examines the various regimes that are used to protect databases to suggest that the continued progress of science and technology that has enabled economic prosperity will be fostered by less regulation. The diversity between and within each of these regimes reflects fundamentally different views of intellectual property. Technology, specifically digitalization that has facilitated the creation, replication and easy dissemination of information has changed the value of information and threatens to create a striated society of information "haves" and "have-nots" due to enclosure mechanisms. As technology advances, the laws which we implement to build upon the existing intellectual property infrastructure must be developed with care to preserve the careful balance of the public good and private interest that has maintained the past 200 years of "progress of science and useful arts." The author suggests ways to structure a database to encourage or reward database developers while simultaneously fostering the advancement of science.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Masters in Information Systems:
A Web-Centric Model Curriculum

Web Technology has changed conventional Information Systems (IS) and conventional Information Technology (IT) as we know it.  There is no doubt that Web technology will provide the foundation for most future software systems. IS curriculum therefore needs to be brought up to date to reflect this reality.  In this paper we update our earlier research leading to the design of a graduate model curriculum for Information Systems and describe a generic web-centric Information Systems Masters curriculum model.  It is strong on web-technology and its goal is to produce students who are comfortable with both today's technology and technology of the future. Universities and colleges can adapt this curriculum model to design a new Masters in IS curriculum or simply to bring up to date any existing IS/IT curriculum. The model suggests new core concentration courses, and concentration electives.

Keywords: web technology, masters curriculum, Information Systems, IS, IT

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

The Emerging IS Global Profession: 
Accreditation - The Quality Assurance Dimension

As the global economy has expanded, the demand for quality information systems (IS) people increased globally.  Ascertaining the quality of education in IS programs at colleges located within and outside the boundaries of the USA has become increasingly important to employers, students and the public.  Accreditation is the quality assurance dimension of IS.  IS accreditation is a reality in the USA and “Substantial Equivalency” status is available to computing programs outside the United States now that CSAB has joined ABET.  What is the status of IS accreditation?  What is “Substantial Equivalency”?  How can “Substantial Equivalency” be available to programs outside the USA?  What constitutes an accredited program?  Who benefits from accreditation?  What are the criteria for accrediting information systems programs?  This paper addresses these and other accreditation issues and questions.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W5                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

An Instrument to Classify
End-Users Based On the User Cube

Chittibabu Govindarajulu 
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

chitti@drexel.edu

End-user computing (EUC) has led to increased end-user productivity and satisfaction.  In order to reduce the risks inherent to EUC, organizations should better manage EUC. As a first step different groups of end-users must be identified. Existing classification schemes have weaknesses and fail to capture the different roles contemporary end users play. Cotterman and Kumar (1989) proposed a user cube based on the three main dimensions of EUC – development, operation, and control.  Even though this is rational approach to end user classification, it has been largely ignored by researchers.  This may be due to the lack of an instrument to implement the cube.  Hence, in this paper, a 10-item instrument is presented and data collected from 292 end users show that the instrument has strong construct validity.  Practitioners can find this instrument very useful in determining the characteristics of EUC in their firms which in turn would be beneficial to devise strategies for EUC management.

Keywords: End-user computing, EUC Support, End-user Types, Instrument for Classification

 
Communications
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

The Status of End-User Computing Support:
An Exploratory Study

Chittibabu Govindarajulu and Susan K. Lippert
Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA

chitti@drexel.edu    lippert@drexel.edu

End-User Computing (EUC) influences user productivity, information systems backlogs and user satisfaction.  An exploratory study of 192 Midwest end-users was undertaken to investigate support services and end-user types superimposed on support sources.  The results of this integrated review offer a richer understanding of end-user dynamics.  Data collection occurred through a three-part questionnaire.  End-user types were categorized using the Cotterman and Kumar (1989) classification scheme.  Support categories were assessed using the Mirani and King (1994) instrument.  The Govindarajulu and Reithel (1998) assessment instrument evaluated support services within information centers for local MIS staff and informal assistance.  Results are presented from instrument validation procedures and descriptive data analysis that permit conclusions about EUC dynamics.  Instrument validation was conducted using standard measures of internal consistency reliability and factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha and a Principle Components Factor Analysis (PCFA), to facilitate factor loading.  Descriptive data analysis employed conventional frequency distributions, scatterplots, descriptive data statistics, and other graphical data displays.

Keywords:  End-user computing, EUC Support, End-user Types, Measures of Classification

 
Technology
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Security of Mobile and Wireless Networks

Kaj J. Grahn
Arcada Polytechnic, Espoo, Finland

Göran Pulkkis
Arcada Polytechnic, Espoo, Finland

Jean-Sebastien Guillard
Ecole Nationale Superiéure d’Electronique, Bordeaux, France

kaj.grahn@arcada.fi      goran.pulkkis@arcada.fi  
jean-sebastien@guillard.as

This paper gives a topical overview of wireless network security aspects. Security measures taken depend on the different protocols, standards, techniques and systems available. A brief introduction to security protocols, standards and corresponding technologies is given. The essay will concentrate on 2G, 2.5G, 3G and wireless local area networks. Standards, like WAP, IEEE 802.11, HomeRF, HIPERLAN/2, IPSec and Bluetooth, are included. A local area network, MediaPoli, has been implemented to work as a testbed for new innovations, products and services. The development environment is based on this high-capacity wired/wireless broadband network. Key research areas, actual projects and offered services are discussed. All activities aim at the future information society.

Keywords: security, mobile, wireless, network, testbed

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Impact of Information Systems Implementations on Vertical Mergers and Acquisitions: A Framework

Nikhil S Gurjar
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India
nikhil_gurjar_for_you@rediffmail.com

S. D. Jog
Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India
Sdjog@me.iitb.ac.in

Manoj K Jha
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India
manojkjha@faculty.nitie.edu

S Amanullah
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India
amanulla@faculty.nitie.edu

The present work is an attempt to develop a conceptual framework for evaluating the impact of information systems implementations on Mergers and Acquisitions (referred to as M&A). Although this work focuses on vertical M&A, the framework can easily be extended to horizontal and conglomerate mergers. We begin by attempting to understand what M&A really are. We then move on to understand information systems as we know them today. Thereafter, we classify the nature of businesses from an information perspective. Technology assessment is then carried out on the existing information systems that are implemented in a company. This gives us an understanding of the characterization of the merging entities. We then go about understanding what the strategic options for the companies post merger are. These options are then evaluated to study the impact on the merger. An analytical framework is then developed in two cases that have been considered.

Keywords: Merger and Acquisitions (M&A), Information Systems, Information Strategy.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

A Study of the Influences of
Application Interfaces on End User Training Outcomes

Effective and efficient training is a key factor in determining the success of end user computing (EUC) activities in organisations. This study examines the influences of two application interfaces, namely icons and menus, on training outcomes. Training outcomes were measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and perceived ease of use. Effectiveness included the keystrokes used to accomplish tasks, the accuracy of correct keystrokes, backtracks and errors committed. Efficiency included the time taken to accomplish the given tasks. Perceived ease of use rates the ease of the training environment including training materials, operating system, application software and associated resources provided to users. To measure training outcomes, an experiment was conducted with 159 users. The study found that icon interfaces were more efficient and effective for end user training and menu interfaces were more easy to use in the given training environment. The findings appear to indicate that when the tasks become complicated, icons are limited in representing this complexity and menus appear to be providing better solutions for tasks accomplishments. There is a need for training designers to consider application interfaces when designing EUC training programmes.

Keywords: End User Computing, Training, Application Interfaces

 
Communications
in Room W6                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Access to Knowledge - Better Use of Internet

Volkmar H. Haase 
Technische Universität Graz, Austria
vhaase@ist.tugraz.at

Christian Steinmann
HM&S GmbH, Graz, Austria
cs@hms.org

Stephan Vejda,
HM&S GmbH, Graz, Austria
stv@hms.org

WIP-Austria is an internet portal developed by Austrian Research Centers and by HM&S GmbH Graz. It gives access to databases, electronic and printed documents as well as to consultancy and services. The WIP database is based on “knowledge objects”: the contents of a document or service are defined by a two dimensional matrix (knowledge map) based on a decimal classification scheme and a set of pragmatic attributes. WIP is accessed by posing questions; questions are interpreted as linguistic variables which can be used to build an “interrogation map”. Pattern matching together with a Fuzzy Logic reasoning process leads to best fits.

The WIP prototype is in pilot use by the Austrian Research Centers.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Weaving a Web Development Curriculum

Wayne A Haga and Janos T Fustos
Metropolitan State College, Denver, CO, USA

haga@mscd.edu   fustos@mscd.edu

Faculty in the Computer Information Systems department at the authors’ institution is in the process of developing a new Computer Information Systems degree with several areas of emphasis.  One of the proposed areas of emphasis will be to prepare students for a career as a web developer.  As part of the curriculum development process, the authors collected data regarding the current demand for web developers, the education level requested, salaries, and the specific skills employers are demanding.  The research process included reading and recording the education level, experience, and specific skills employers are requesting for hundreds of jobs that have been posted on the Internet within the last few months.  Additionally, data was gathered from other sources including courses and programs offered at other institutions of higher education.  Using this data, a model curriculum for a degree leading to a career in the field of web development is proposed.

Keywords:  education, model, curriculum, web developer, job requirement

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Shared Visions:
Professional Development
for Teacher Education Faculty

Leslie Hall, Clint Fisher, Sandra Musanti,
Don Halquist, Matt Magnuson, and Darcy Simmons-Klarer
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

ldhall@unm.edu, cfisher@unm.edu, smusanti@unm.edu,
donh@unm.edu, mmagnu@unm.edu, dsim@unm.edu

This paper discusses a professional development program in the area of technology integration for teacher education faculty. The program was funded by a Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers This initiative involved one assistant professor of educational technology and five doctoral students as Tech Guides as the professional development team. Twenty-five faculty members who teach methods courses for licensure participated in the program. Each graduate student mentored five faculty members. The design of the professional development relied on the faculty members as professional educators to co-design the program with the professional development team. We discuss some of our insights gained from this three-year initiative and suggest ways in which this and similar programs could be supported and institutionalized in colleges of education.

Keywords: teacher education, professional development, technology integration, mentoring, graduate students

 
Community and Society
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

A Study of the
B2B Progress in Japanese Enterprises

Sho Hanaoka
Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama, Japan

hanaoka@peach.ocn.ne.jp

Most Japanese enterprises are confronted with a rapid decline of business performance due to the long time recession of the Japanese economy. They gradually lost their competitive advantages in global marketplaces especially in the business domains of matured products including PCs. Most of them are forced to take prompt measures to respond to their business environment. For the past few years, we have been conducting questionnaire surveys repeatedly about B2B information systems in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results of these surveys show clearly that their business performances have no clear relevance to the utilization B2B information systems. In conclusion, from a management strategy point of view, Japanese SMEs are classified into the following four types: (a) a group of high technical skills in special fields irrelevant to the utilization of information systems, (b) a new business model oriented group, (c) a manpower cost reduction oriented group, and (d) a foreign manufacturing subsidiary group. In the near future, these groups seem to polarize into group (a) and group (d).

Keywords: competitive advantage, B2B, small and medium-sized enterprises, Japanese companies, management strategy

 
Information Science & Library
Unable to Attend 

Integration of Upper Division
Business Core Classes: A Lesson in Informing Science

John D. Haney and Mary Bowers
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

john.haney@nau.edu, mary.bowers@nau.edu

In an effort to provide knowledge and skills essential for successful careers, the College of Business Administration (CBA) designed and offered a course in Fall 2000 consisting of four classes (marketing, management, computer information systems, and business communication) taught together in a block by a faculty team. The overarching goal of this course format was to present business as an interdisciplinary process, to link concepts to practice. The course was named BizBlock. The BizBlock experiment for the 2000-2001 academic year showed that misinformation that leads to unfulfilled expectations results in general student dissatisfaction. The imbalance and lack of integration among the four disciplines contributed to high dissatisfaction based on unfulfilled student expectations. The results of student feedback regarding BizBlock indicate that when properly informed, people consider even an unsatisfactory experience acceptable if it is what was expected.

Keywords: Informing Science, Business Core, Cross-Functional Teaching

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Informing South African
Students about Information Systems

Mike Hart
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

mhart@commerce.uct.ac.za

At the University of Cape Town, females and students disadvantaged under the previous South African apartheid education system are under-represented in Information Systems (I.S.) classes. This research shows that these are also the groups most ignorant about I.S. at the school-leaving stage.  After being informed about the discipline through a small intervention, a significant increase in enthusiasm for majoring in and being employed in I.S. occurred. This should result in a better educational fit and greater enrolment of these groups in I.S., and reduce some switching to I.S. from other subjects at a later stage. The key influencing sources for university students’ study decisions are also examined, and it is evident that a different approach is needed for each group in order to maximize the number of quality I.S. graduates.

Keywords: Information systems, education, perceptions, computers, major

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Teaching E-Business Concepts
Using SAP’s OnLine Store

Paul Hawking
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Brendan McCarthy
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Susan Foster
UNITEC, Auckland, New Zealand

Paul.Hawking@vu.edu.au   Brendan.McCarthy@vu.edu.au    Susanfoster@optusnet.com.au

Many universities around the world have formed strategic alliances with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems vendors to incorporate these types of systems into their curriculum.  Over the past few years the sharing of curriculum resources between universities has facilitated this process.  Universities are now struggling with the concept of how to develop e-business curriculum incorporating their existing ERP system.  Universities are faced with firstly having to implement the available functionality and then develop the appropriate curriculum.  This paper describes a student centric method to assist universities with this curriculum delivery. Students at Victoria University have implemented and documented the implementation process of SAP’s OnLine Store.  This documentation will be freely distributed to other universities to assist them with their implementation.  Staff at the University are in the process of developing e-business curriculum based on the OnLine Store which will also be distributed to other universities.

Keywords: Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, SAP, e-business, IS curriculum, OnLine Store.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

An Applied Approach
to Teaching HR Concepts Using an ERP System

Paul Hawking
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Susan Foster
UNITEC, Auckland, New Zealand

Penny Bassett
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Paul.Hawking@vu.edu.au   Susanfoster@optusnet.com.au   Penny.Bassett@vu.edu.au

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems offer a software-based system that handles an enterprise’s total information system needs in an integrated fashion. These systems are purported to incorporate “best business practice”. Many universities have realized the potential of these systems as educational tools and have developed curriculum accordingly.  Many companies in recent times have identified the benefits of the Human Resources functionality offered by ERP systems.  However universities in Australia have not realized the potential of this functionality as a teaching tool to reinforce many of the concepts covered in a Human Resource Management curriculum. This paper outlines the experiences at Victoria University where SAP Human Resources functionality was incorporated for the first time.  It also describes a number of student projects under development that will enhance this curriculum development. The paper will provide a model to other universities who are considering developing similar type of curriculum.  .

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Customizable Knowledge Portals for Teaching

I.T. Hawryszkiewycz
University of Technology, Sydney

igorh@it.uts.edu.au

The paper describes knowledge portals as providing services that can be customized to a variety of learning environments. It defines portals to be made up of three main components, a community of practice, a body of knowledge, and services to maintain the body of knowledge. The body of knowledge is organized around a knowledge map, which can be accessed through a number of services.  The services support a general learning process, which is defined using knowledge sharing as grounded theory. The communities can be organized for different environment. The paper describes the services needed to support a general learning process including collaboration, knowledge evolution and illustrates them with an example in a learning environment.

Keywords:  Learning Process, Collaboration, Portals, Knowledge Sharing, Web-based learning

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

A Role for
Information Systems Education Programs

R. A. Hodgett
University of South Australia, Australia

alan.hodgett@unisa.edu.au

The international media continually reports a worldwide shortage of skilled information technology literate people. An intermediary role or disciplinary area between business requirements and computer science has been identified in the past. A number of institutions have developed information systems education programs to fill this role. A survey of past graduates and employers evaluates the performance of several information systems education programs at the University of South Australia.

Keywords: information, systems, education, programs, graduates, employers

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

A New and Flexible Graphic Organizer
for IS Learning: the Rich Picture

Pat Horan
Monash University, Australia and
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia

horan@ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au

Graphic Organizers are “visual representations that are added to instructional materials to communicate the logical structure of the instructional material” (Jonassen, 1993). They are widely used in teaching at all levels. The Rich Picture, introduced by Checkland (1981) as part of Soft Systems Methodology, is now well established as a system development tool but has not yet been extensively used in teaching. Its basic characteristics, however, make it an ideal tool for teaching and learning about information systems, with the added benefit of providing insight into students' learning, for both students and teachers. Both undergraduate level students and their teachers are making increasing use of this flexible tool.

Keywords: Rich Pictures, Graphic Organizers, Information systems teaching

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W8                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Using CITIDEL as a Portal
for IT Education: a Panel Discussion

The National Science Foundation has recently funded a variety of projects through the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (SMET) Digital Library initiative, coined NSDL.  One such project is the Computing and Information Technology Interactive Digital Educational Library project, also known as CITIDEL, which is part of NSDL’s Collection Track activities.  CITIDEL is a consortium of five universities that includes Virginia Tech (the lead institution), Hofstra University, Penn State University, The College of New Jersey, and Villanova University. 

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

The Added Value of E-learning

W. Jansen
Royal Netherlands Military Academy,The Netherlands

H.M. van den Hooven
Staff Royal Netherlands Army, The Netherlands

H.P.M. Jägers
Royal Netherlands Army, The Netherlands

G.C.A. Steenbakkers
Ordina Management Consulting BV, The Netherlands

  w.jansen@mindef.nl  henkhenkerson@hotmail.com   hpm.jagers@mindef.nl  Wilchard.Steenbakkers@ordina.nl

Increasingly, organizations take decisions on the application of e-learning. In this paper we assert that the specific added values of the e-learning application depend on the type of learning. From a didactical perspective three types of learning are distinguished. These three forms of learning are ‘ideal types’, consisting of a combination of variables which collectively provide an effective way of learning. Various e-learning applications can support each of these three types of learning and thereby be an important aid to attaining the learning goals.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Data Communications and Networking
in IS Curriculum: Framework for the Class Project

Andrzej Tomasz Jarmoszko and Michael Gendron
Central Connecticut State University,
New Britain, CT USA

jarmoszkoa@ccsu.edu and gendronm@ccsu.edu

Both practitioners and academics have recognized the importance of Data Communications and Networking (DCN) in undergraduate and graduate Information Systems education.  This is confirmed, in particular, by the content of IS’97 and MSIS 2000 model curricula for degree programs in Information Systems (note IS’97.6 and MSIS2000.3).  Experience shows that one of the most effective ways to teach Information Systems concepts is via the juxtaposition of theory and practice in the setting of a group class project.  Yet, in contrast to other IS courses, there appears to be no established way to conduct the class project in a DCN course, particularly in relation to the methods of logical and physical network design, and cost/benefit evaluation of network implementation.  Our research addresses this shortcoming through an attempt to synthesize the experience of IS programs, and through an effort to take that experience a step forward. 

Keywords: IS’97.6, MSIS2000.3, class project, data communications, networking, network design

 
Community and Society
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Comprendiendo Nuestras Politicas:
The Need of an Effective C&IT Policy for a Nation’s Development, The Venezuelan Case

Carmen Joham
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Carmen@joham@unisa.edu.au

This research explores the argument that developing countries (DC) need effective and good quality C&IT policies as a strategy for socio-economic growth. It focuses on Venezuela and attempts to gain an understanding of the current and potential impact of national C&IT policies and strategies in the C&IT diffusion process and globalisation arena. It is suggested that a shift is needed towards a wider concept of policy design. The traditional design reflects a rather ‘prescriptive’ approach, while I propose that a ‘participatory’ approach, which encompasses social, political, technical, ethical and other issues, is both necessary and desirable for effective policies to exist. A multiple perspective interpretative methodology is used in order to understand the complexities of effective C&IT policies in Venezuela to attract C&IT investment and achieve socio-economic growth. Consequently, the study of C&IT policy is based on an approach that emphasises a multiple level of analysis encompassing the levels of the individual, society, organisation, and technology. 

Keywords: C&IT national policy, developing countries, information technology, Venezuela 

 
Communications
in Room W6                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Situating the "Research Paper"
Assignment in the IT Workplace

Arthur B. Kahn
University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA

ArthurKahn@ComCast.Net

The "Research Paper" is a classic assignment in many IT courses.  We explore its pedagogical advantages and weaknesses, especially since most students have career goals in the workplace rather than in academia.  It is proposed that the research paper assignment be reformulated as a rhetorical case.  This is a case-teaching device which is similar to, but distinct from the business case.  We conclude by conceptualizing a simulated internship which can re-situate a broad range of IT "Research Papers" into the workplace.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

The Use of DSS/EIS for
Sustainable Development in Developing Nations

Sherif Kamel
The American University in Cairo, Egypt

skamel@aucegypt.edu

The use of information technology over the last two decades has been growing in different sectors and industries tackling many issues in the economy and penetrating many aspects of decision-making and organizational development. Information and communication technologies are also seen as a building block that can support socioeconomic development. Therefore, nations around the world have been attempting to capitalize on the capacities of various information and communication technologies to support their planning, development and growth processes. Egypt, as a developing country, attempted since the mid 1980s to invest in its information infrastructure and focus on the development of information and management support systems to leverage the decision making process in the government and the public sector with an emphasis on its local administration using management support systems such as decision support systems and executive information systems for socioeconomic development objectives. Following is the outcome of a research conducted covering the GIDSC project, sponsored by the government, and aiming to leverage the decision making process for governors.

This paper is partially based on a research conducted in 2001 by Yosra Gadallah on the use of advanced information systems applications in the decision making process at the public administration level in Egypt.

Keywords: Developing Nations, Egypt, EIS, DSS, Sustainable Development

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Using IT to Support Knowledge
Management - A Survey-Based Study
of a Large, Global Consulting Company

Karlheinz Kautz
Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

Karl.Kautz@cbs.dk

The paper reports the results of a quantitative, survey-based study which investigates the use of an IT supported knowledge management system (KMS) which is embedded in knowledge management framework in a large, global IT consulting company. The main findings are that the majority of the IT users are not familiar with the KMS framework. Still, the KMS is used by 3/4 of all respondents, but mainly to search for general information, but much less to participate in competence networks to develop shared knowledge assets. The KMS is not used as the primary repository and communication media for knowledge assets. The limited use is explained by the practitioners as being caused by lack of time and their perception of the KMS as a slow and poorly structured technical infrastructure. These and other findings are discussed with regard to the current understanding of knowledge management as presented by the literature in the field.

Keywords: knowledge management, IT support

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Content Management - Concept and
Indexing Term Equivalence in a Multilingual Thesaurus

Susanna Keränen
Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

skeranen@abo.fi

Languages and the thinking they reflect stem mainly from cultural needs for expression. A controlled vocabulary, thesaurus, can be seen as a cultural product. The focus of this study is the translatability of British-English social science indexing terms into Finnish language and culture on a conceptual, term and indexing term level. The emphasis is on Finnish language and human factors. The study is quantitative-qualitative and the perspectives are both linguistic and sociological – a combination through which a broader understanding of the phenomena is being aimed at in the general frame of information science. The study uses multiple cases aiming at theoretical replication. It is thus an empirical case study and the goal is to illustrate a new theory of “pragmatic indexing (term) equivalence”. Several data collection and analysis methods will be used in order to construct a theory by triangulation of evidence. The aim of this research is a doctoral thesis in information studies.

Keywords: multilingual thesauri, translation problems, equivalence, controlled vocabularies, social science terminology

 
Journalism
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Ejournalism: Production, Communication,
Interaction and Research Opportunities for Reporters

Alan Knight
Central Queensland University,
North Rockhampton, Australia

a.knight@cqu.edu.au

The Internet is shaping the ways journalists communicate, construct their stories, publish their material and interact with their audiences. Journalism produced for text, audio and television is increasing digitised; converging on the Internet to create a new hybrid professional practice, eJournalism.  This paper considers how traditional forms of advanced reporting, such as investigative journalism, may be enhanced by internet technologies.

Keywords: eJournalism, journalism, internet, multimedia, investigative

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W8                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Can Action Research be Successfully Used
in Information Systems Doctoral Research?
 Panel Discussion

This panel discusses the use of action-research in doctoral programs. Three researchers, from three different continents, speaking three different languages, and representing three different cultures, provide their view, based on the actual work they carried out, using this approach, to obtain their PhDs. The fourth member of the panel – a senior IS researcher – will provide the advisor’s perspective, drawing from his experience on advising candidates using various approaches, including action-research. The audience is encouraged to pose questions during and between presentations. A slot for widespread discussion is reserved at the end.

Keywords: Research Approaches, Action-Research, Doctoral Research, Doctoral Advising, Information Systems

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Using E-tools in Computer Science Education:
a Proposal

Herman Koppelman
Dutch Open University,
University of Twente, The Netherlands

Herman.Koppelman@ou.nl

We present some thoughts about devising educational designs for experiments with the use of e-tools in computer science education. We stress that the focus should not be on technological issues but on educational design issues. Our intention is twofold. First of all it is proposed to gather information about the use of such tools, in order to compose guidelines and hints for computer science lecturers. Next, we propose to design and conduct new promising experiments about using e-tools within the context of computer science education.

Keywords: web-based learning, IT-education, distance education.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W5                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

ICT Industry Certification:
Integration Issues for Post-Secondary
Educational Institutions in Australia

Terry W Koziniec and Michael W Dixon
Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

t.koziniec@murdoch.edu.au  m.dixon@murdoch.edu.au

Driven by the incredible pace of technological change the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) vendors have led the charge in promoting industry based technical certifications. Today, there are a plethora of instructor led, intensive, short courses that provide training in an ICT vendor’s product and prepare participants to sit a certification exam. Increasingly, vendors are developing expanded certification programs suitable for inclusion in high school, college and university courses.  Although these programs are attractive to students and educational institutions, there are obstacles to be overcome and risks to be evaluated when attempting to integrate a certification program within a traditional offering.  This paper examines these issues in detail.

Keywords:  Industry certification, Information and Communication Technology, Training, Education

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Shaping New Paradigms
in the Higher Education Development:
Dilemmas for Transitional Countries

Denisa Krbec
Faculty of Economics and Tourism “Dr. Mijo Mirković” in Pula, University of Rijeka, Croatia

dkrbec@efpu.hr

Higher education in Croatia, as well in the other transitional countries, is undergoing significant changes. Those reforming activities affect not only institutions directly but also their relationship to society at large. Recognizing that higher education plays also a crucial role in the various aspects of transitional transformation, many scientist and expert’s reviews place it in the current political, economic, cultural and social environment in which they operate. In this sense, and despite the specific reform start-point of each country, there is a general consensus on the need for regional cooperation. According the Bologna Declaration, the CEE countries need certain compatibility, which means certain similar structures of the educational system in order to strengthening the educational structure of the CEE region.

This paper reviews different aspects of higher education challenges. Among many others, the use of IT in higher education effectively requires good tactics as well as a sensible strategy.

Keywords: HE development, social inventions, transition, HITRA.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W8                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Global Perspectives and Partnership on the
Information and Communication Technology Divide:
a Panel Discussion

Susan Kretchmer
Johns Hopkins University, USA

Rod Carveth
Texas Tech University, USA

Karen E. Riggs
Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

susankretchmer@yahoo.com   docrod99@hotmail.com   riggsk@ohio.edu

[Not Available]

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Towards An Adaptive
Multimedia Learning Environment

Frank.Kurzel@unisa.edu.au   Jill.Slay@unisa.edu.au   Yenha.Chau@unisa.edu.au

In this paper, we describe an evolving adaptive multimedia learning environment that utilises multimedia presentation techniques in its interface while still providing Internet connectivity for management and delivery purposes. The structure of the domain is based on concepts that can be presented in a variety of ways; multimedia players display the content on the client computer. A student and course model exists that determine what content item is presented, based on both student prior competencies (pre-requisite knowledge and skills) and preferences.

Keywords: Educational multimedia, Adaptive Systems, Dynamic course generation, Student profiles.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

On the Dissemination of
I.S. Research Findings into Practice

Michael Lang
National University of Ireland, Galway

Michael.Lang@nuigalway.ie

Because research findings often do not have direct or immediate relevance to practitioners, the question arises as to how those findings should be disseminated to them in a suitable form at such time as they do become relevant. A central argument of this paper is that the traditional mechanisms whereby IS researchers disseminate their work are prone to numerous communication breakdowns, and that much work which could potentially make valuable contributions to practice is haplessly lost within the vaults of academia. Using the well-known Shannon & Weaver communication model, three major problems are analysed: the choice of dissemination channels, language barriers, and the alienation of academia from industry. It is then argued that these problems are primarily caused by deep-rooted institutionalised norms, and the enduring absence of a cumulative tradition within IS research. A number of suggested reforms are presented.

Keywords:  IS Research Relevance; Communication of IS Research

 
Technology
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Hypermedia Systems Development:
Do We Really Need New Methods?

Michael Lang
National University of Ireland, Galway

Michael.Lang@nuigalway.ie

Hypermedia systems design presents challenges that are not normally encountered with the development of orthodox ‘traditional’ information systems. In recognition of these challenges, and of the purported inadequacy of conventional software engineering techniques, there is much support in the literature for the view that new, specialized methods are needed. The question must therefore be asked: do we really need new methods for hypermedia systems design? This research-in-progress paper provides an outline answer by asking how hypermedia systems differ significantly from ‘traditional’ information systems, by hypothesizing why specialized hypermedia design methods set forth in the literature are not being use in practice, and by suggesting a number of implications.

Keywords:  Hypermedia; Systems Development Methods; Design Techniques

 
Community and Society
in Room W6                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Information and Communication Technology:
Gender Issues in Developing Nations

Kimberly Betz Leahy and Ira Yermish
St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Kimberley_Leahy@yahoo.com   iyermish@sju.edu

As Developing Nations seek to leverage scarce resources toward the goal of achieving a developed status they must reevaluate past practices and explore available and affordable technologies.  Where information and communication infrastructures are weak, use of low-cost, easily distributed technologies have proven effective.  Still, many developing nations have failed to incorporate a resource in great abundance, their women, to use these new technologies to greatest advantage.  This paper will address the implications of women’s lack of economic and educational parity, and offer examples of how the education of women through the use of information and communication technology can enhance a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Keywords:  Developing Nations, IT Education, Gender Issues

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Humanization of the
Computer Science Curriculum

J.A.N. Lee
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, USA

janlee@cs.vt.edu

Computer science programs in many universities are reacting to pedagogical initiatives to improve and broaden the education, particularly in the domain of adding less quantitative and more humanistic studies to a curriculum that is predominately technical.  Integrating these concepts into the syllabus of computer science courses can be extremely difficult especially in the light of the lack of preparedness of many faculty.  This paper examines some of these initiatives and suggests solutions to take the greatest advantage of these opportunities while at the same time improving the caliber of computer science graduates.

Keywords: Curriculum, Education, Ethics, Social Impact, Internationalism, Diversity.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W8                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Take Blackboard Course Design
to a New Dimension: a Workshop

This workshop is on designing dynamic Blackboard courses. The purpose of this workshop is to teach professors how to create a "one click" to all information course.  The workshop will teach professors how to create drop down menus and how to create lecture notes with outlines on the side of the page. The workshop will also teach professors how to create hyperlinks from their course lecture notes to the discussion threads or drop box.  The workshop will provide templates for professors to insert their information and teach them how to zip their files together to upload them into their Blackboard course. Each participant in the workshop will receive a CD with web page templates for creating pages with drop down menus and frames for course notes.  Also, on the CD will be a written manual with step-by-step directions and hints on creating a dynamic Blackboard course. 

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W8                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Software Compare and Contrast:
Blackboard, WebCT and Lotus Notes
a Panel Discussion

Barbara Lewis,
University of South Florida, FL, USA

Virginia MacEntee and Pam Youngs-Maher, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY, USA

blewis@admin.usf.edu    macentee@oswego.edu  youngsma@oswego.edu

With the introduction of the World Wide Web, the learning environment is changing. Online courses allow learners, once bound by place and time constraints in the traditional classroom, new access to education and collaborative learning.   Technology enables this method of delivering education.  Selection of technology and software needs to be based on the needs and objectives of the online programs and the students. The instructor needs components that will allow him/her to create active learning experiences in the courses.  This investigation evaluated three Course Management Software programs based on each one's ability to accommodate different active learning experiences in online courses.

Keywords:  Active Learning, Online Learning, Course Management Software, WebCT, Blackboard, Lotus Notes Domino Server

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Knowledge and Decision Making –
Do We Want What We Need?

Bogdan Lipicnik
University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

bogdan.lipicnik@uni-lj.si

Knowledge is a category that includes many past decisions. They could be good for the past but it is a question if they can work in the future. We can talk about programmed and non-programmed decisions. When a predetermined situation triggers a predetermined response we can talk about a programmed decision. If one wants to make a non-programmed decision he/she must search for information, identify the problem, evaluate possible alternatives, and act. If the process is more complicated, programmed decision will be more effective. Our research has revealed that future managers in Slovenia possess knowledge that involves more programmed that non-programmed decisions. This may indicate that they will have a lot of difficulties with decision making in complicated organisational systems. However, they cannot learn how to take decisions (even if they want to) because they do not know what they actually need. If they are successful at non-programmed decisions they want more knowledge from the same area; in fact they would need more knowledge about programmed decisions - and vice versa.

Keywords: knowledge, learning, decision making, management, education, team, problems.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

To Speak or Not to Speak:
Developing Legal Standards for
Anonymous Speech on the Internet

Tomas A. Lipinski
Center for Information Policy Research,
University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, WI, USA

tlipinsk@csd.uwm.edu

This paper explores recent developments in the regulation of Internet speech, in specific, injurious or defamatory speech and the impact such speech has on the rights of anonymous speakers to remain anonymous as opposed to having their identity revealed to plaintiffs or other third parties. The paper proceeds in four sections.  First, a brief history of the legal attempts to regulate defamatory Internet speech in the United States is presented. As discussed below this regulation has altered the traditional legal paradigm of responsibility and as a result creates potential problems for the future of anonymous speech on the Internet.  As a result plaintiffs are no longer pursuing litigation against service providers but taking their dispute directly to the anonymous speaker. Second, several cases have arisen in the United States where plaintiffs have requested the identity of the anonymous Internet speaker be revealed.  These cases are surveyed.  Third, the cases are analyzed in order to determine the factors that courts require to be present before the identity of an anonymous speaker will be revealed.  The release is typically accomplished by the enforcement of a discovery subpoena issued by the moving party. The factors courts have used are as follows: jurisdiction, good faith (both internal and external), necessity (basic and sometimes absolute), and at times proprietary interest. Finally, these factors are applied in three scenarios—e-commerce, education, and employment—to guide institutions when adopting policies that regulate when the identity of an anonymous speaker—a customer, a student or an employee—would be released as part of an internal initiative, but would nonetheless be consistent with developing legal standards.

Keywords: Anonymous Speech, Internet, Legal Standards and Compliance, Institutional Polices and Decision-Making

 
Justice, Law and Public Policy
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Technology Trust: An Inventory of
Trust Infrastructures for Government
and Commercial Information Systems
In Support of Electronic Commerce

Susan K. Lippert
Drexel University, Philadelphia, United States

lippert@drexel.edu

Electronic business transactions have exploded in the 21st century.  End users rely on Internet security and privacy systems for safeguarding personal information and protection from unauthorized use.  While these systems focus on safety, security and privacy, infrastructures supporting predictability, reliability and utilization of technology, classified as technology trust, are underdeveloped.  This benchmark review will identify, catalog, and report on existing technology trust structures within commercial and government electronic networks.  Increased trust in technology leads to more effective utilization and rapid adoption of electronic commerce.  The technology trust elements can have a profound affect on speed and efficiency of technology adoption, use, and acceptance.

Keywords:  technology trust, electronic commerce, trust structures, technology adoption, technology acceptance, benchmark, technology predictability, technology reliability, technology utility

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

TAL Rules Versus ECA Rules:
an Attempt for Comparison in the
Credit Management Context

Maria Mach
University of Economics, Wroclaw, Poland

mach@manager.ae.wroc.pl

Credits are the one of the most important functions in bank management, because, from one side, thanks to a good credit policy a bank can earn money, but from the other side, in the case of weak or wrong credit policy the bank can make substantial losses.  Therefore in the field of credit policy management, intelligent information systems can be very helpful, as it is a complex and heterogeneous field, needing complex management and decision-making procedures.

There exist many technical solutions aimed at helping the decision-makers in this field, from “traditional” ones, as databases, to more sophisticated tools, as for example expert systems, the main aim of which is to perform the analysis of applications for a credit, thus helping to make proper credit decisions.

Credit management is closely related to time, in other words, the temporal aspect of credit management can be very clearly seen. Therefore while building intelligent systems in this area, it would be recommended to take this temporal aspect into account.

The article concentrates on the question of searching and choosing an intelligent computer tool which would fulfil the above mentioned requirements, the toll which would help to make necessary credit analyses, to make proper credit decisions, taking into account the temporal aspect of credit management. Two solutions are discussed: TAL language and active databases. Some exemplary credit management rules are encoded both in the TAL language and in the form of ECA rules. Both kinds of rules are analysed and discussed, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

Keywords: Credit management, TAL rules, active databases, ECA rules, intelligent systems

 
Journalism
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Virtual Organization to Virtual Product:
Structural Challenges to Online Newspapers

D. W. Maguire
Edith Cowan University,
Perth, Western Australia, Australia

allmaguires@bigpond.com.au

This paper is about the online newspaper industry and the organisational changes that have been necessitated by economic downturn and natural evolution. It explains how online newspapers were created as virtual organisations (VO) by publishers to protect valuable franchises and in the early stages of the technology boom were replicas of their traditional newspaper counterparts. It describes two VO structures that have applied during the online newspaper life cycle and the changes as economic pressures lead to de-structuring. This has resulted in convergence of publishing cultures with online and traditional disciplines working in a multi-skilling environment on two different products with similar content delivered through physical and electronic means. A model of the new working entity is provided. The paper concludes by raising cultural organisational issues relevant to a clash of journalistic disciplines.

Keywords: virtual organisation, traditional newspapers, online publishing, media convergence, journalistic culture

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Teaching SAP’s ABAP Programming Language to IS Students: Adopting and Adapting
Web-based Technologies

Brendan McCarthy and Paul Hawking
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Brendan.McCarthy@vu.edu.au   Paul.Hawking@vu.edu.au

This paper describes the experiences of Victoria University in adopting and adapting web-based technology to enhance the teaching of SAP’s ABAP programming language. The involvement of SAP relates to Victoria University integrating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems into their curricula and research programs through a strategic alliance with SAP. The SAP technical infrastructure facilitates the development of courses using Internet technology and has particular suitability to the teaching of programming.

This paper describes the Web-based technologies used and how they have been adapted to improve both the teaching of programming and management of assessment. Each technology is discussed and advantages identified with possible future research developments put forward.

Keywords: Computer Programming, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, SAP, ABAP, Internet, Web technologies.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Promise and Reality of
Practiced Distributed Education: Faculty Perspective

Mary S. McCully
National Defense University, Washington, D.C.

mccullym@ndu.edu

Student centered.  Demonstrable outcomes.  Center of gravity shifting from learned to learner.  Learn by doing.  Collaboration.  Critical thinking.  Student responsible for learning.  Deeper learning.  Ongoing feedback.  Outcome assessment.  Priority on how, not where, a student learns.  Life-long learning opportunities.  Global access 24/7/365.  Effectiveness.  Efficiency.  Revolution.  These are but a few of the touted promises of distributed education (DE) that are supported by new and evolving web based information technologies (IT).  Education periodicals bombard their readers with heralds of the IT community’s pledge to revolutionize education out of the industrial age of Taylorized mass production of passive students and into the knowledge age of life long active learners.  Notable educators predict DE will profoundly affect the traditional classroom, forcing it to follow the DE classroom in becoming more of a student centered active learning environment.  (Carnevale, April, 2001; Newman & Scurry, 2001; Toward a model of distributed learning, 1999)  Is there any truth to this hype?

Keywords:  Distributed Education (DE), Interactive Distributed Education, Distance Learning (DL), Student Centered, Active Learning

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

An e-Business Class Using Just-in-Time Teaching and Cooperative Learning with a Constructivist Approach

Nina McGarry and Mary J. Granger
George Washington University, Washington, DC  USA

nmcgarry@gwu.edu  granger@gwu.edu

This paper reviews the inventiveness of faculty combined with the resources of the World-Wide-Web in creating a just-in-time course for seniors studying e-Business.  Additionally, the instructor incorporated cooperative learning adhering to a constructivist teaching approach.  Adherence to just-in-time teaching using cooperative learning following a constructivist approach supports the goals of rapid access to the latest information, exchange of ideas and evolution of new concepts.  It was an opportunity to develop a real project, incorporating meaningful skills learned in other business disciplines, with the potential for enhancing their future careers.   This course is an exposure to searching for and using the most current and vital information necessary to thrive in the changing situations.  It also enables students to learn how to learn.

Keywords:  JiTT (Just in Time Teaching), Cooperative Learning, Constructivist Approach.

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

The Scope of e-Learning:
Expanded Horizons for Life-Long Learning

Dr Elspeth McKay and Professor Bill Martin
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

elspeth.mckay@rmit.edu.au   bill.martin@rmit.edu.au

The purpose of this paper is to open a discourse on the broad scope of e-Learning.  The authors provide an overview of a much larger debate—mindful that the consequential topics are far reaching.  The discussion first deals with the need to utilize meta-knowledge within the context of Web-based learning providing the background for the process of scoping e-Learning.  The e-Learning phenomenon we experience today provides courseware designers with an opportunity to revisit all the fundamentals of instructional science involving learning theories and human performance.  In setting the scene for the reader, it is useful to drill into the background issues of the digital learning context.  It will be shown that the scope of e-Learning is more comprehensive than the commonly accepted issue of electronic delivery of instructional/learning materials.  Wise use of the technologies can provide the leverage human beings require at this point for expanding their horizons for life-long learning.

Keywords: meta-knowledge, knowledge management, human-computer interaction, Web-based instruction

 
Communications
in Room W6                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Communicating Across Borders:
A Proposed Model for Understanding
Cross-Cultural Issues for the Successful
Strategic Implementation of Information Systems

John E. Merchant
California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

merchant@csus.edu

While there has been a great deal of research on the application and implementation of IS, there is less research on the variables which can contribute to the successful strategic implementation of IS and its relation to the cultural/work values of the people involved in the implementation.  We are familiar with the two paradigms for evaluating IS, the first calls for the evaluation to be based on the relation to design specification - or user needs.  The second concentrates on the performance related aspects which consider outcome of the system.  This paper presents a model, based on research of different cultures, that outlines an approach to consider in relating the correlation of IS to the Culture and Work values of the individuals in a particular cultural setting.

 
Technology
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Customizing the
Human-Computer Interface to Compensate for
Individual Cognitive Attitude: An Exploratory Study

Sylnovie Merchant
California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

smerchant@csus.edu

A major concern facing system developers is how well the system will operate for the intended user.  The aspect which allows a user to interact the system is referred to as the Human-Computer Interface (HCI).  This paper discusses the various approaches advocated by researchers in an attempt to explore the issues surrounding HCI.

Keywords:  human-computer interface, user, system development

 
Communications
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Network Monitoring Tool

A Network Monitoring Tool “NETMON” is presented in this paper We have developed the tool that will Monitor the Network of any company say “XYZ” by performing certain Tests. NETMON will monitor the network by performing certain tests such as ping test, memory test, disk test, uptime test and URL test that would help to analyze where exactly the problem lies in the Network. The Results of the Tests are displayed in the forms of graphs that can be viewed on the browser. These Tests will produce the Results as the ouput, which will be stored in the database. Test Graphs will be generated from the Test Results stored in the database. These Test Graphs will help us to analyze where and at what time in the Network the congestion had occurred.

Keywords: Monitor, Collector, PerformanceAgents (PASP), Tests, Test Graphs, Network, Congestion.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W5                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Critique Skills as the
Core Competency of IS Academics

Mike Metcalfe, Jonathan Wilson, and Carmen Joham
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

mike.metcalfe@unisa.edu.au  carmen.joham@unisa.edu.au

This paper is about information systems (IS) academics. It seeks to suggest a unique core competency they may wish to consider developing in order to differentiate themselves from practioners.  So, this paper will explore the argument that the core competency of IS academics should be a unique insight into how to critique technology related problems. There are multiple disparate critique methods that IS educators might seek to develop and apply. Examples include systems thinking, multiple perspectives, dialectic analysis and critical social thinking.   

Keywords: Critique, IS academics, education

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Informing Across a Cultural Divide:
Delivery of Distance Education

Iwona Miliszewska and John Horwood
Victoria University, Melbourne City, Australia

Iwona.Miliszewska@vu.edu.au   John.Horwood@vu.edu.au

Victoria University offers a Computer Science degree in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong program matches the one in Melbourne, but both the content coverage and the delivery model of the Hong Kong program are affected by expectations and demands of the Hong Kong government and students. The paper outlines challenges, legislative, cultural, quality, time and distance that shaped the program delivery model. It examines the social construction of the program curriculum, and identifies cultural factors that have had most impact in modifying the program. The paper regards distance education as an informing discipline and discusses the program delivery model in terms of the Informing Science Framework. It uses a Project subject to illustrate the model and rationale behind it, and comments on suitability of various multimedia components as program delivery vehicles. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the Hong Kong program experience on future directions in distance education.

Keywords: distance education, informing environment, cultural constraints, project model.

 
Technology
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Modelling Online Security and Privacy
to Increase Consumer Purchasing Intent

Michael Milloy, Dieter Fink and Robyn Morris
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia

gtrock@iinet.net.au  d.fink@ecu.edu.au   r.morris@ecu.edu.au

This paper investigates the concerns consumers have with respect to security and privacy when determining purchasing intent in the Web environment. The online retailing environment (e-retailing) is examined and various issues relating to security and privacy are identified as potential inhibitors for e-retailing. The paper then presents a model of the interaction between online security and online privacy taking into account the online experience levels of consumers and the role that symbols and statements have on security and privacy considerations. Based on the theoretical foundations of the paper, a number of research propositions are developed which can be tested by subsequent empirical research. The paper concludes that security and privacy are evolving issues both requiring continuing research. It can however be postulated that consumers will, albeit slowly, come to terms with online security and privacy, possibly due to different reasons. An improved understanding of how these issues impact on consumer purchasing intent will enhance e-retailers’ ability to formulate strategies to overcome inhibitors and incorporate promoters of trust with respect to security and privacy issues into their website designs.  This may well speed up the process of consumers coming to terms online security and privacy and can only serve to foster the growth of e-retailing in the future.

Keywords: e-retailing, online security, online privacy, consumer trust

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

A Strategy for Developing End-user Developers:
‘I Thought I Hated Every Minute of It,
But I Learnt Such a Lot’

Ann Monday
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Ann.Monday@unisa.edu.au

A continuing challenge for university lecturers is to develop successful programs that challenge students whilst at the same time responding to a ‘customer’ driven market place.  In 2000, two new courses were introduced into a business degree program as a result of feedback from past and present students and the business community.  These courses aimed to explore the wider issues of end-users developing small-scale applications to support their role at work whilst possessing a limited skill set in applications development.  In each year (2000 and 2001) a different approach was adopted.  This paper reflects upon the teaching of these two courses over the two-year period, the responses of students to the different approaches and the extent to which the learning outcomes were achieved.

Keywords: End-user developers (EUDs), user-developed applications (UDAs), business students, case study, role- play, student feedback

 
Communications
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Teaching Effective Listening Skills
to Information Systems Majors

Janette Moody
The Citadel, Charleston, SC USA

moodyj@citadel.edu

Information systems (IS) professionals have consistently expressed the need for good communication skills in IS graduates and universities have responded by providing communication components within their curriculum and coursework.  However, the typical understanding and execution of communication skills revolve around teaching presentation skills.  While presentation skills are important components of communication, the communication skill of effective listening is of equal importance for information technology professionals.  In fact, this skill is essential in the information requirements stage of systems development when the end-user is required to work with the IS professional in deriving the basics of the new system to be developed.  This paper describes how the teaching of effective listening skills can be incorporated into a variety of IS courses and offers some exercises and techniques.

Keywords: communication skills, listening, information systems professionals, experiential learning

 
Philosophical Issues

in Room W6                                          on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Using the Web to Connect Research and Practice: Towards a Discipline of Evidence-Based Practice

Daniel L. Moody

In most disciplines, research findings take a long time to filter into practice, if they ever do at all.  The result of this is under-utilisation of research results and sub-optimal practices.  There are a number of reasons for the lack of knowledge transfer.  Firstly, practitioners don’t have the time to keep up with the latest research¾in professional practice, there is little time available to read academic journals.  Once they have completed their formal education, they tend to rely on tacit knowledge acquired through experience rather than explicit knowledge in the form of academic research.  In addition, the volume and geometric growth of research literature results in a massive problem of information overload¾it is not humanly possible for practitioners (and challenging even for full-time researchers) to keep up with all the research published in their field.  From the “supply side”, academic research is primarily focused on the production rather than distribution of knowledge¾there is little investment in the distribution of research results beyond academic communities.  The Internet provides a potential solution to this problem, in that it provides a common information infrastructure for connecting those who produce knowledge (researchers) and those who need to apply it (practitioners).  This paper describes two projects which use the Internet to make research results directly available to practitioners in the workplace.  The first is a project in a health department which provides medical staff with on-line access to the latest medical research at the point of care.  The second is a project currently in progress to implement a similar system to support IS practitioners.  Finally, we draw some general lessons about how to improve transfers of knowledge from research and practice, which could be applied in any discipline. 

Keywords: knowledge management, evidence based medicine (EBM), Internet, World Wide Web, web-based development, IS research, IS practice, education, decision support

 
Working Together
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

The Visionary Companies,
an Excellent Case of the Informal Systems Thinking

Matjaz Mulej, Zdenka Zenko, and Vojko Potocan
University of Maribor, Faculty of Economics and Business,
Maribor, Slovenia

mulej@uni-mb.si  zdenka.zenko@uni-mb.si  vojko.potocan@uni-mb.si

Systems theory has become a worldview aimed at holism, and a methodology supportive of holism. But it has also become a sophisticated mathematical and philosophical approach, which limits it to rather few intellectuals and systems theorists. This is not enough for humankind to do well. An insight into the most successful companies, called the visionary companies in the analysis briefed here, let us see that an informal, implicit, indirect, systems thinking might be as important as the systems theory (which still remains important as its aide). The point is double, at least: (1) systems thinking practices holistic thinking that implicitly attains the requisite holism on a high level, (2) systems theory is not a theory aimed at itself, but at supporting the holistic rather than one-sided thinking, by building bridges between mutually different specialists. Informal, implicit systems thinking can do equally much good as the one backed by systems theory.

Keywords: Bertalanffy, business success, holism, informal systems thinking, systems theory, unsystemic thinking, visionary companies, worldview.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Student Content Analysis of Business News Coverage

Catherine K. Murphy
Penn State York, York, PA

cxm53@psu.edu

Content analysis of media coverage provided a setting for group work, critical thinking, research, and data analysis.  The analysis was motivated by a series of news stories that had damaged the reputation of the local community.  The question was whether local news coverage was negative toward the business community.  A business class addressed the problem and found that articles that business would view as favorable predominated.    Based on their research, the class formulated a public relations strategy.   Although this setting is a business class, content analysis of news media would work in other classes that emphasize critical thinking and problem solving. 

Keywords: content analysis, news, teaching methods

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W8                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Business Partnering for IT Education:
a Panel Discussion

Developing and providing information technology (IT) education that is current and strikes a balance between theory and practice is challenging.  Incessant changes and innovations in computer hardware, software, and communication technologies coupled with ever-evolving business practices, make the task of teaching IT courses daunting.  One approach to addressing this problem is the formation of academic-industry strategic partnerships.  This panel discussion addresses issues surrounding the formation and cultivation of win-win partnerships between academic institutions and business firms.

 
Justice, Law and Public Policy
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Tailoring Educational Elements for Academic Teaching - The JurMOO

B. Nett, B. Huber, S. Knirsch, L. Meyer, B. Remmele,
F. Röhr, B. Schinzel, and B. Stingl
IIG - Modell, University of Freiburg, Germany

nett@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de
Ninjana66@hotmail.com
knirsch@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de
lea@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de
remmele@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de roehr@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de
schinzel@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de stingl@modell.iig.uni-freiburg.de

The RION project (financed by BMBF) aims at improving Computer & Law (C&L) teaching in Germany while implementing Web-based media. For the fluid and interdisciplinary field of C&L, educational material is very scarce. Furthermore, educational cultures differ according to the divers affiliations of C&L. Therefore, the RION platform will present a variety of documents online, which have not been accessible on the Web before.

However, publishing law collections online can only be one step to improve C&L teaching. Therefore, RION is trying to develop a didactical concep­tion for the new platform, the main focus being on coope­ra­tive, practice-oriented learning and gender mainstreaming. Due to the diversity and the constraints given in the project, the RION team does not look for the "ideal platform", but instead tries to tailor promising ele­ments of possible C&L online learning. In this text, the example of JurMOO, which we tested in C&L teaching, is used to demonstrate this.

Keywords: Tailoring, Education, MOO, Computer & Law, gender mainstreaming, constructivism, practice, CSCL

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

An Innovative Model to Foster 
Web-based Collaborative Learning

Eugenia M. W. Ng and Ada W. W. Ma
The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong SAR, China

eugenia@ied.edu.hk  ama@ied.edu.hk

Learning to learn is the theme of the current educational reform in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Learners should be well equipped with collaborative skills, communication skills, creativity, critical thinking skills, and skills in using information technology to be responsive to the changing requirements of the workplace and the society. We have drawn the elements of collaborative learning from research findings and come up with a new model to be implemented for our learners in the coming semester using the Web as an avenue for on-line discussions and peer assessments. The group projects, bi-weekly reflective journals, peer assessments should be able to cultivate learners’ positive attitude towards sharing. The evidence will be gathered through quantitative and qualitative means to examine if there is any relationship between collaborative learning and peer assessment with the final assessment grades received.

Keywords: collaborative learning, model, peer assessment, Web-based learning.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Course Integration as Learning Environment
for Increasing Competence

Stig Nordheim and Hans Olav Omland
Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norway

Stig.Nordheim@hia.no   Hans.O.Omland@hia.no

Creating a realistic learning environment for Systems Analyst and Design (SAD) students is a challenge. Integrating discipline-oriented courses is one way of creating such an environment. This paper discusses a possible integration between two courses where the courses provide a basis for experiences that enrich the learning environment and give the students important competence in the IS field. The paper describes levels of integration and some consequences for students and lecturers. The discussion ends in a proposal for integration of the two courses. The integration of the courses will be on a so-called temporal co-ordination level where the main contributory factors are deliverables and the co-ordination of time allotted to the courses. The question of course integration is seen both from the lecturers’ perspective and the students’ perspective. The integration was tried out in the spring term 2002. 

Keywords:  Competence, interdisciplinarity, learning environments, course integration

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

E-Business Education:
A Comparison of Graduate
Programs and Curricula

James E. Novitzki
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

j_novitzki@jhu.edu

This study looks at both MBA and MS E-business programs.  Specifically it looks at the number and types of courses offered in these programs and compares and contrasts what is offered between the MS and MBA programs, and also between the different groups of schools being studied.  Results indicate that there is no real consensus in what knowledge is core to the concentration.  The programs offered at any particular school seem to have only incidental agreement with other programs, and many seem to be the result of faculty skills available and requests for specific skills from organizations, rather than a logical integrated approach to the issues inherent in the global issues of E-business.  There appears to be a major need to determine the core knowledge that is critical in the design, development, management, and operation of E-business in organizations to produce graduates with consistent knowledge that is school independent. 

Keywords: Electronic Commerce, Electronic Business, MBA, MS, curriculum, required courses.

 
Community and Society
in Room W6                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Foot and Mouth Disease: Informing the Community?

Briony J Oates
University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

B.J.Oates@tees.ac.uk

The 2001 foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in the UK had a significant impact on the economic and social well-being of rural communities. This paper examines the FMD pages of four local government websites in Northern England: Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland and North Yorkshire County Councils. Each county was badly affected by FMD. The contents of the FMD webpages are analysed and compared: which audiences were addressed, what information was provided or omitted, and how well the audiences’ needs were met. The study shows the breadth of audience types and information that could have been included, but no site covered all the necessary angles. Furthermore, the websites did little to address the psychological problems arising from FMD or to enhance participation and democracy in their local communities. By examining how the councils informed those affected, lessons can be learnt which are relevant to any future disruption to a community.

Keywords: foot and mouth disease, websites, World Wide Web.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

Teaching Database Research Methods
in Marketing Research Classes:
A View from the Trenches

Joseph L. Orsini
California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

orsinij@csus.edu

The opportunities provided by the continuous growth in computer storage capacity have led to the development of methods to investigate large databases.  However, while industry is heavily involved in research using databases, primarily for marketing purposes, the university academic component of the marketing research discipline has not yet caught up with industry practice.  This study discusses database research methods, along with the impact on the need for the teaching of business and marketing research using databases and their methodologies.  Suggestions made, include team teaching and the formation of a university-wide Informing Sciences Department.  This organization structure would be analogous to that currently found in most universities: a separate statistics department, while utilizing disciplinary specialists to teach statistical applications within the various disciplines.

Keywords: database, research, teaching, data mining, organization, university, marketing

 
Community and Society
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Designing a Tool To Know Invisible Resources:
the Hyperguide Project, an XML Storyboard for Digital Collections Access

Augusta Maria Paci and Daniela Canali
Institute of Studies on Research and Scientific Documentation
Italian National Research Council, Roma, Italy

paciwin@isrds.rm.cnr.it   daniela.canali@tin.it

In this paper, we describe the Hyperguide project, an interactive push XML application for digital collection access, designed as a tool to know invisible resources in the web. Hyperguide enhances the accessibility of cultural and scientific webs for all users, overcoming present barriers in information seeking, addressing the need of improving web access, selection and filtering and usability of information resources in specific domains.

The tool will be an interactive push application which provides the template to build a storyboard in XML to facilitate identification of selected web sites of heterogeneous nature.

Keywords: Storyboard, digital collection, web accessibility, usability, information

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Automated Essay Grading System Applied to a First Year University Subject – How Can We Do It Better?

John Palmer, Robert Williams & Heinz Dreher
Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA, Australia

palmer@netunltd.com.au  diagnosys@optusnet.com.au  dreherh@cbs.curtin.edu.au

Automated marking of assignments consisting of written text would doubtless be of advantage to teachers and education administrators alike.  When large numbers of assignments are submitted at once, teachers find themselves bogged down in their attempt to provide consistent evaluations and high quality feedback to students within as short a timeframe as is reasonable, usually a matter of days rather than weeks.  Educational administrators are also concerned with quality and timely feedback, but in addition must manage the cost of doing this work.  Clearly an automated system would be a highly desirable addition to the educational tool-kit, particularly if it can provide less costly and more effective outcome.

In this paper we present a description and evaluation of four automated essay grading systems.  We then report on our trial of one of these systems which was undertaken at Curtin University of Technology in the first half of 2001.  The purpose of the trial was to assess whether automated essay grading was feasible, economically viable and as accurate as manually grading the essays.  Within the Curtin Business School we have not previously used automated grading systems but the benefit could be enormous given the very large numbers of students in some first year subjects.

As we evaluate the results of our trial, a research and development direction is indicated which we believe will result in improvement over existing systems.

Keywords:  assessment, assignment, automatic, essay, grading, marking, plagiarism

 
Communications
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Organising Information And Procedures For Effective Communication Across Multinational Campuses

Sharon Parr
Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Qld. Australia

s.parr@cqu.edu.au

The Faculty of Informatics and Communication at Central Queensland University (CQU) is well known for providing a quality product and service to its customers.  CQU’s central campus is located in Rockhampton.  CQU operates within a complex tertiary environment, and offers its programs and courses from a multitude of campuses around the world. 

The organization of information and procedures that define the way in which the Faculty does business is a complicated process that requires a high level of interaction between staff and associated partners.  Communicating through email is convenient; however, it can be ineffective if it is not understood correctly and completely at the receiving end.  This paper presents an overview of how the Faculty of Informatics and Communication operates in a complicated tertiary environment and how it uses different communication tools to effectively coordinate the delivery of its educational product and is able to build relationships with remote campuses. 

Keywords:  Electronic Communication, Effective Communication, Email, Information Technology, Multinational Environment

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Yet Another Role for
Job Satisfaction and Work Motivation -
Enabler of Knowledge Creation
and Knowledge Sharing

Celina Pascoe
University of Canberra, ACT, Australia
cxp@comedu.canberra.edu.au

Irena M Ali
Department of Defence, Canberra, Australia
irena.ali@dsto.defence.gov.au

Leoni Warne 
Department of Defence, Canberra, Australia
leoni.warne@dsto.defence.gov.au

This paper describes a continuing study which uses a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods to identify factors which facilitate organizational and other types of collaborative learning.  In this study, such learning is termed ‘social learning’, and refers to those factors which enable the sharing of knowledge and practice, and which foster generative learning. This paper’s specific focus is on the roles played by job satisfaction and morale in collaborative learning.

The study to date has undertaken research in three settings: a tactical headquarters, a single service strategic headquarters; and a joint services strategic headquarters. The study’s long term aim is to develop architectures to support the development of organizational and information systems that enhance organizational learning and facilitate knowledge management.

Keywords: knowledge management, organisational learning, organizational studies, job satisfaction, motivation, defence studies, architecture

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W5                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

IT Ethics in the Internet Age: New Dimensions

Sanjeev Phukan
Bemidji State University, Bemidji, USA

sphukan@bemidjistate.edu

Issues of IT Ethics have recently become immensely more complex. The capacity to place material on the World Wide Web has been acquired by a very large number of people. As evolving software has gently hidden the complexities and frustrations that were involved in writing HTML, more and more web sites are being created by people with a relatively modest amount of computer literacy. At the same time, once the initial reluctance to use the Internet and the World Wide Web for commercial purposes had been overcome, sites devoted to doing business on the Internet mushroomed and e-commerce became a term permanently to be considered part of common usage.

The assimilation of new technology is almost never smooth. As the Internet begins to grow out of its abbreviated infancy, a multitude of new issues surface continually, and a large proportion of these issues remain unresolved. Many of these issues contain a strong ethics content. As the ability to reach millions of people instantly and simultaneously has passed into the hands of the average person, the rapid emergence of thorny ethical issues is likely to continue unabated.

Keywords: Ethics, Internet, Proliferation, Technology, Issues.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Internet Addiction Disorder and Identity on line:
the Educational Relationship

Stefania Pinnelli
Faculty of Teaching Science, University of Lecce, Italy

stefania@ilenic.unile.it

In the mid 1990s people became fascinated with the Internet, a fact which has not only redesigned the geographic borders of communication within a totally new dimension, but has also created new profiles of personal identities.  This paper aims to describe how identities are constructed in cyberspace and outline the risks and the opportunities of such an evolution of human identity.  Moving from the identity concept from the theories of Goffman, Erikson and other authors, this paper intends to answer these questions and to discuss the problem of personal identity in the age of the Internet.   The aim is to introduce and to discuss through a pedagogical point of view, a specific type of mental disturbance of the Internet age called Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), a disturbance classified through the criteria of DSM IV as a new form of dependency.

Keywords: Identity, social interaction, Internet Addiction Disorder, IAD, telematic communication, educational task.

 
Working Together

in Room W7                                       on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

The Virtual Organization
from the Viewpoint of Informing

The conditions of globalization require companies to transform from the traditional industrial enterprises into the modern post-industrial ones, which are becoming open, flexible and innovative. The focus on knowledge has lead to increase attention towards information technology (IT) as one of the main source of competitive advantages. Organizational starting points for their functioning lead to a specific organizational structure, e.g. virtual organization. Virtual organizations enable organizational and/or individual core competencies to be brought together when needed, and disbanded when no longer required on one hand. On the other hand, competitive pressure over the modern conditions of business requires a high quality of business functioning. Business functioning of virtual organizations can be significantly improved mainly in the field of its management, which is its least developed and investigated area. An important viewpoint of management presents a holistic information support to management, which, to a great extent, determines the quality of the entire management and has also a major impact on the results of business operation.

Key words: virtual organization, information support, requisite holism of information support.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Environmental Visualisation as an Informing System

P.B. Quinn and I.D. Bishop
Department of Geomatics, University of Melbourne, Australia

quinnyb@bigpond.com  idbishop@unimelb.edu.au

The aim of this research was to produce interactive, dynamic, collaborative, engaging, realistic scenes that could be used for educational or community purposes. The visualisations were based on the Macedon Ranges, a scenic area 80 km to the north west of Melbourne. The pedagogical foundations of good practice for on-line leaning and cooperative work were examined. Informing Science provided a framework for describing, evaluating and improving the products of the research. Conclusions from the research are that Informing Science provides an excellent framework for studying Visualisation types of Informing Systems. Editable games such as Sacrifice, Tribes2 and Unreal have promise as visualisation environments and some examples are presented.

Keywords: informing systems, environmental visualisation, computer games, pedagogy

 
Communications
in Room W7                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

An In-forming Web-based Environment
for a Bachelor of Software Engineering Degree – DoIT

Sita Ramakrishnan and Ashley Cambrell
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Sita.Ramakrishnan@csse.monash.edu.au  Ashley.Cambrell@csse.monash.edu.au

This paper presents our template-based approach in building a web-based system titled "Dynamic curriculum Organisation by Innovation through Technology (DoIT)". We have considered the meta-environment of any course development process and found that we can produce two kinds of knowledge assets from this environment. A delivery (asset) environment forms the basis of our traditional course delivery mechanisms. An in-forming (asset) environment can be created to engage the students to learn what they have learnt from the delivery environment. Normally, curriculum developers and curriculum implementers (lecturers and TAs) are involved mainly with only one aspect of this asset: the delivery environment. Our Bachelor of Software Engineering students also learn about what they have learnt in their undergraduate degree course by engaging with the in-forming environment of DoIT.  We present a meta-environment for creating knowledge assets and show how our DoIT system fits within this educational knowledge framework.

Keywords:  SWEBOK, Informing science, in-forming

 
Other
in Room W5                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

e-Governance for Municipal Hospitals:
Subsidy Vs Quality of Healthcare Services

Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) in the state of Gujarat, India looks after the basic needs of its four million citizens. AMC offers primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare services at subsidized rates. The load on AMC tertiary healthcare hospitals has been increasing rapidly, stretching the hospital resources beyond limits. Insufficient resources at these hospitals call for increased allocation of AMC funds to provide a satisfactory level of service. However, AMC is unable to allocate a larger share of its finances to the health sector owing to similar demand from other sectors. AMC authorities are therefore concerned about their ability to offer quality healthcare services at subsidized rates. In this paper, we describe a few e-Gov. applications to address and resolve the issues related to costs, revenues, subsidy, and the quality of services, so that AMC can meet its social obligations in the health sector satisfactorily. Some of our recommendations have been already implemented, while others are under consideration.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

A Technique for Teaching Website
Effectiveness in Undergraduate I.S. Classes

Eugene J. Rathswohl
University of San Diego, San Diego, CA,  USA

gener@sandiego.edu

Website design practitioners and researchers have proposed criteria for effective website design based on experience and common sense, intuition, rules-of-thumb, and empirical studies of website usability. Typically, published checklists for evaluating websites emphasize design features such as information layout, navigability, and the technical performance of the website. University undergraduate students often first learn seriously about website design in introductory information systems courses. This paper describes a teaching pedagogy to help students learn how to evaluate commercial and organizational websites. The pedagogy emphasizes students developing their own criteria of website effectiveness and information quality, designing their own checklist incorporating those criteria, and then utilizing their checklist to rate websites in several e-commerce domains. The pedagogy emphasizes a mix of theoretical, practical, exercising, and real-world learning approaches.

Keywords: Website evaluation, Website quality, Website usability, undergraduate teaching

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Collaborative Virtual Environments to Support
Communication and Community in
Internet-Based Distance Education

Sam Redfern and Niall Naughton
National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

sam.redfern@nuigalway.ie   niallgnaughton@yahoo.co.uk

In this paper we discuss the use of modern information and communication technologies for distance education (DE) purposes. We argue that current technologies and implementations do not adequately support the key concepts of communication and community that many practitioners believe to be important, particularly if modern pedagogies such as constructivism are to be supported. We propose that collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) are appropriate tools for improving DE, and we discuss the current developments in the areas of CVEs in particular and in computer supported co-operative work (CSCW) in general. We also note those areas in which the majority of CVEs implemented to date have not reached their full potential for DE support, discuss current thought regarding online community, and outline a proposed CVE-based system for DE.

Keywords: Distance Education, Online Learning Communities, Collaborative Virtual Environments

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 15:45-17:15 

The New Tertiary Model
and Its Low-Level Impact

Tony Richardson
Massey University, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

t.s.richardson@massey.ac.nz

There have been many articles written which describe the changing financial environment currently faced by tertiary institutions.  In New Zealand our Universities and Polytechnics have faced a gradual per-student reduction in government funding over the past decade and, despite the public utterances of ministers of education, there is little evidence that this is anything but a continuing trend.  This has pushed institutions towards the so-called “commercialisation of the education sector”.  It means greater efficiencies in the delivery of courses, greater emphasis on the marketing of popular courses and reductions in the numbers of general and academic staff.  The dreaded word “restructuring” has begun to be whispered in the corridors and staff lounges of Universities, a state akin to the whisperings of “downsizing” and “core business concentration” among the true corporates of our economies. Interestingly, this shift in tertiary institution modeling at the macro level has been reflected down at the micro level of individual courses and assessments and it is this low level change which has prompted this paper.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W7                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Learning Object Repository Technologies for TeleLearning: The Evolution of POOL and CanCore

Repositories provide mechanisms to encourage the discovery, exchange and re-use of learning objects. This paper describes Portals for On-line Objects in Learning (POOL), a consortium project of the TeleLearning NCE to build a learning object repository scalable to the national level.  Funded in part by the Canarie Learning Program, POOL contributes to the development of two focal technologies: “POOL POND and SPLASH” a distributed architecture for a peer-to-peer network of learning object repositories, and CanCore, a practical metadata protocol for cataloguing learning objects.

Keywords: Learning object repositories, CanCore, POOL, metadata.

 
Technology
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

Tailoring Information
to the Needs of Clients

Peter Rittgen
Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

rittgen@bwl.tu-darmstadt.de

The vision of providing clients with information that is tailored to their needs has sparked off a tremendous interest in languages that are on the one hand standardized and hence widely applicable but which are on the other hand also highly flexible and can hence be customized to specific applications. The universal exchange format XML (eXtended Markup Language) is a candidate for such a language but we argue that it does not go far in solving the problems of integrating information from different sources and being provided or used by different actors especially across organizational boundaries. We therefore show existing approaches of enriching XML with application-specific semantics and argue why these are not applicable in many cases. This leads us to introduce a process-oriented method for effectively informing clients on the basis of XML by tailoring documents to their specific needs.

Keywords: Electronic Business, Event-Method Chain, XML Common Business Library, commerce XML, information model

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 10:30-12:00 

Collaborative Technologies for Knowledge Management: Making the Tacit Explicit?

Vicki Romaldi
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

vicki.romaldi@unisa.edu.au

The theory of organisational knowledge creation indicates the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is extremely important in corporate knowledge management efforts. Additionally, in this context, the sharing of tacit knowledge is considered to be a critical component of successful knowledge management initiatives. This paper explores the value of using collaborative technologies as enablers of knowledge management. It primarily focuses on the conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge through the use of technologies with hyperlinking and hypermedia capabilities. Organisational issues surrounding the capture of tacit knowledge are also introduced by discussing the essential ingredients of successful knowledge management programs.

Keywords: knowledge management, tacit knowledge, hyperlinking, hypermedia, organisational culture.

 
Communications
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

The Inexact Science
of Informing Ourselves

Lynne Marie Rudasill
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Katherine McNeill-Harman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

James R. Jacobs
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

rudasill@uiuc.edu

mcneillh@mit.edu

jacobs@uiuc.edu

Advances in information technology provide opportunities to inform users in ways that were only imagined twenty years ago.  However, information providers need to inform themselves concerning the best way to deliver resources to these users.  Often assumptions are made about users that are inaccurate and untrue.  With a view to these shortcomings, a team came together to collect information from users to assist in the redevelopment of a departmental library homepage at a major U.S. university.  Methods used by social science researchers and by businesses to ascertain customer preferences were employed to increase understanding of the needs and desires of library users.  Applying the tools of qualitative research improved understanding of the inexact science one must practice in dealing with diverse groups.  This paper is a report of the findings, some surprising, some expected, but all relevant to the shape "Informing Science" takes in one library.

Keywords:  Libraries, Focus Groups, Usability, Web page design, User-centered design

 
Justice, Law and Public Policy
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

The Austrian
Electronic Economic Chamber

Christian Rupp
Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, Vienna, Austria

Christian.Rupp@wko.at

1994 the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber has started to build an interactive portal on the internet (wko.at). This portal is at the moment one of the greatest information and know-how platforms in Europe and a combination between eGovernment and eBusiness. More than 370.000 companies have access to an extranet which includes more than 700.000 pages online. More than 1.000 organisations within the Chamber Network and their employees have access to an intranet and upload daily their information worldwide. Around 12.000.000 visitors per month download information in the field of law, business news, statistics and other content like WebTV, or use an eMarketplace. On the international side wko.at has business information about austrian products in 19 languages online. Online legislative projects as well as administrative procedures and other interactive possibilities are also implemented. The content of WKO.at also appears in many other Austrian ePlattforms. Therefore wko.at is a best practice example of eAustria in eEurope.

Keywords: eGovernment, eBusiness, Chamber Network Portal, Know-How Management Platform, eAustria, eEurope

 
Technology
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 15:30-17:00 

The Semanference System:
Better Search Results through Better Queries

Anthony Scime and Colleen Powderly
State University of New York College at Brockport, Brockport, NY, USA

ascime@brockport.edu   powderly@rochester.rr.com

A method to create more effective Web search queries is to combine elements of a semantic approach with a template that requests specific details about the searcher’s information need.  Fundamental to this process is the use of semantics.  Nouns, key phrases, and verbs are scored according to their frequency of use, then ranked as keywords and used to create the query.  Key phrases and words in the query accurately represent the concepts of the text, generating search results that are significantly more accurate than those available using current methods.

Keywords: Information Retrieval, Text Processing, Query Refinement, Semantic Web Searching, Natural Language Processing

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

The Skills Gap as Observed between IS Graduates
and the Systems Development Industry –
A South African Experience.

Elsje Scott, Robert Alger,
Simon Pequeno, and Nicky Sessions
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

escott@commerce.uct.ac.za  rob@candor.com
spequeno@hitech-it-solutions.com  nicky100@webmail.co.za

This paper discusses the results of an investigation into the skills gap between Information Systems (IS) graduates at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the South African Systems Development Industry.  Three objectives were defined for this study.  Firstly to measure the alignment between the level of skills possessed by students and the level of skills demanded by development companies. Secondly to identify and compare the most prominent specific skills that industry requires with the skills of students and thirdly to determine whether the students obtained the skills directly through UCT.  The study revealed that there was alignment between the importance rating of companies and the skills of students in some areas, but not in others.  Although correlation exists between the specific skills and technologies that industry requires and those which students possess, knowledge of certain technologies is lacking from the formal IS curriculum.

Keywords: Skills Gap, Systems Developments Skills

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Reflections on a Course
in Emerging Information Technologies

J. Frederick Sencindiver and William H. Money
The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

freds@gwu.edu  wmoney@gwu.edu

The purpose of this paper is to serve as a departure point for a discussion on the design of a course in Advanced Information Technologies, with a special emphasis upon providing students with the tools to identify new, emerging technologies.  The paper also shares the experience of offering such a course to graduate students in Information Systems during the Spring of 1999, the Spring of 2001, and the Spring of 2002.

The course was designed to engage the students in participatory learning exercises in order to give them experience differentiating emerging from simply new information technologies, using principles described early in the course.

Keywords:  Emerging Technology, Adult Education, CIO, Certification, participatory learning

 
Working Together
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Human Factors in Person-Technology
Relations in Business Decision Making

Rimvydas Skyrius
University of Vilnius, Vilnius, Lithuania

rimvydas.skyrius@ef.vu.lt

The goal of this paper is to produce an evaluation of IT-based support of human decision capabilities, as seen by the decision makers themselves. Recent research efforts, conducted in communication with actual decision makers in business and public administration, have been directed at the evaluation of potential of information technologies (IT) in supporting high-level information activities and creation of new knowledge for the participants. Author’s research experience shows that, apart from preference for simple support tools and techniques, there is a preference for tools and techniques that hold their efficiency over time in related situations, and are oriented towards more stimulation than automation. Also, a hypothesis is made that decision makers prefer more variety and flexibility in information sources than in decision models and other forms of “frozen knowledge”.

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                on Wednesday, 19 June 13:30-15:00 

Regional IS Knowledge Networks:
Elaborating the Theme of Relevance of IS Research

Mikael Söderström and Torbjörn Nordström
Department of Informatics, Umeå University,
Umeå, Sweden

micke@informatik.umu.se  atn@informatik.umu.se

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the theme of the relevance of IS research. Based on recent experiments and experiences in the borderland between research and practice and politics we suggest some additions to the discussion of the IS research relevance in Fitzgerald  (2001). One addition concerns relevance to whom, where we suggest considering a regional relevance, through cultivation of regional IS knowledge networks. Such networks comprise regional knowledge production in collaboration between researchers and practitioners, and results are made public and tested also in other organizations than the research sites. This is closely related to the view of knowledge and research put forward by American pragmatism. A second addition is to complement Fitzgerald’s suggestion to expose researchers to practice with the suggestion to expose practitioners to research. It is just as difficult to learn the ‘true nature’ of research from reading the executive summary in MIS Quarterly as it is to learn the ‘true nature’ of practice from a couple of interviews with practitioners. A regional IS knowledge network is an excellent opportunity for such double exposure.

Keywords: IS research relevance, Knowledge, Collaboration researchers-practitioners, Knowledge networks

 
Technology
in Room W7                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Utility and Flexibility Functions for
Potential Customers in B2B E-Commerce Transactions

Boris Stavrovski
College of Staten Island, CUNY, New York, USA

Stiminc@aol.com

One of the most evident premises for successful E-Commerce transaction should lie in as much detailed recognition of personal customers’ differentiation as it becomes possible through the usage of multiple data resources available over the Internet. The methodical basis for the evaluation and subsequent utilization of all available data may be formed under the well known concepts of the utility theory. A new quantitative measure of the personal readiness for acceptable concessions in E-Commerce transaction (when the item under the consideration have been already chosen) is proposed in a form of so called flexibility functions for potential customers. Flexibility functions are shown to be useful also as a measure of the personal readiness for changes in a scale of attractiveness for all admissible items. The simple algorithms for the derivation of flexibility functions alongside with the particular examples from the commercial real estate field are further discussed.

Keywords: E-Commerce B2B transactions, flexibility functions, commercial real estate, utility theory.  

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Encouraging Minority Enrollment
in IT Degree Programs through Participatory Organizations

Theresa A. Steinbach, James D. White,
and Linda V. Knight
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois USA

tsteinbach@cti.depaul.edu jwhite@cti.depaul.edu lknight@cti.depaul.edu

Worldwide demand for qualified IT workers has employers exploring under-represented segments of the workforce.  The percentage of women IT workers is not keeping pace with the growth of the industry.  Minority populations, which are country specific, are also under-represented segments.  This paper focuses on three significant minority segments in the United States: women, African Americans and Hispanic Americans.  Studies have shown that increasing the number of these three groups enrolled in university computer science programs can help ease the shortage of qualified IT workers.  One approach to attract and retain these students is to encourage the use of participatory organizations.  This paper traces the initial efforts of one university to retain these segments through student-led chapters of the Association for Computing Machinery – Women, National Society of Black Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.  Critical success factors are identified for use by other universities interested in initiating similar programs.

Keywords: minority, women, African American, Hispanic American, student organizations, computer science

 
Education and IT Education
unable to attend 

Educational Reform as Innovation Diffusion:  Development of a Theory and Test of a Model Using Continuing Professional Development and Instructional Technology

Michael Szabo
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

mike.szabo@ualberta.ca

Lack of implementation of instructional technology either to improve the classroom or to reform educational practice stimulated a study of the diffusion of innovation, which in turn led to creation of a new theory of reform through IT. This was followed by development of a model to test the theory. This paper describes the theory, the model and evaluative results from implementing the model. The major conclusion from this exercise is that research-oriented universities may underestimate the magnitude of the disruptive, second-order reform nature of IT. Consequently, they are likely to apply inappropriate change strategies instead of looking to the guidance from the history of innovation diffusion.

Keywords: Innovation, Diffusion, Professional Development, Reform, Technology

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W5                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Electronic Commerce
Specialisations in MBA Programs:
An Australian Case Study

Arthur Tatnall, Chris Groom, and Stephen Burgess
School of Information Systems,
Victoria University, Australia

Arthur.Tatnall@vu.edu.au  Chris.Groom@vu.edu.au  Stephen.Burgess@vu.edu.au

This paper looks at the development of Electronic Commerce specialisations in an MBA program, and particularly at a recent specialisation developed at Victoria University, Australia for its local and overseas MBA students. These MBA specialisations are very popular in Australia, and half of the MBA programs with specialisations have one in an e-Commerce related field. An examination of some of these specialisations highlighted in the literature, or in Australian universities, shows that the two most popular topics in them are e-Marketing, the management of e-Commerce in business and e-Commerce business models. Victoria University has recently introduced an e-Commerce specialisation that targets these areas, as well as other popular uses of Internet technologies in business and the development of e-Commerce web sites. This specialisation is explained in the paper, along with the different modes of the specialisation delivered at Victoria University campuses in Melbourne, Singapore and Beijing.

Keywords: Computers, information technology, electronic commerce, MBA programs, management education.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Curriculum Development in the Informing Sciences: Ecological Metaphor, Negotiation or Actor-Network?

Change in higher education information systems, and other informing science curricula is inevitable. This paper offers a brief consideration of three different models that can be used to describe how this change occurs. Most curriculum texts give prime consideration to approaches to curriculum change based on research, development and diffusion models, and the paper outlines some objections to the application of models of this type to describing how university curriculum in the informing sciences is built and rebuilt. It offers instead three alternate models; one based on an ecological metaphor, another on curriculum negotiations and the third on innovation translation from actor-network theory, to describe how this process occurs. This is a theoretical paper that does not advocate one model over another, and does not propose the use of any one of these models in devising a new curriculum. It is concerned only with obtaining a better understanding of how this complex process occurs.

Keywords: Curriculum changes, information systems, informing science, innovation

 
Technology
in Room W7                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Information Technology Applications
in the Material Handling Industry

Virginia Anne Taylor
William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

taylorv@wpunj.edu

This study is an exploratory review of the determinants and extent of information technology’s influence on the operations of material handling dealerships in the USA.   The goal is to develop an analysis framework specifying which factors contribute to the transformation of the material handling industry’s practices in relation to using information technology to optimize transactions in goods, knowledge, and services. Knowledge management, sales force automation, customer relationship management, demand chain management, customer service automation, inventory management, and enterprise resource planning, will be investigated. A survey instrument will be used to elicit both information technology ideas that have already changed operations and those that are expected to impact future approaches to informing clients effectively and efficiently.  The primary objectives of this research are to identify relevant issues, develop a pilot case study, and provide an analysis of the participant’s responses to an initial survey questionnaire about these topics.

Keywords: knowledge management, sales force automation, customer relationship management, demand chain management, customer service automation, inventory management, enterprise resource planning

 
Community and Society
in Room W6                   on Thursday, 20 June 9:00-10:30 

Collaboration: the Key to Establishing
Community Networks in Regional Australia

Wal Taylor & Stewart Marshall
COIN Internet Academy, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia

w.taylor@cqu.edu.au   s.marshall@cqu.edu.au

Despite the promise of community involvement, cohesion and empowerment offered by local community networks (CN) using Internet Technologies, few communities in regional Australia have been able to demonstrate sustainable and vibrant CN which demonstrate increased social, cultural or self-reliance capital.

The Faculty of Informatics and Communication at Central Queensland University (CQU) and a local council have established a formal alliance to establish the COIN (Community Informatics) projects to research issues around this topic. This paper presents the initial findings from this work and draws conclusions for possible comparison with other international experience.

The research focuses attention on community understanding and cohesion, local government priorities in a community with relatively low diffusion of the Internet and the competing demands in a regional university between traditional service provision in an increasingly competitive market and the needs of establishing outreach research for altruistic, industry establishment and commercial rationale.

Keywords: Community networks, community informatics, University outreach, ICT adoption

 
Community and Society
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 15:45-17:15 

Transition From A Microfinance Institution
to Regulated Bank: Technology Infrastructure
Planning in a Developing Country

Winston Tellis and Aaron Seymour
Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA

Winston@mail.fairfield.edu  aseymour@mail.fairfield.edu

In this paper, the authors describe the process of converting from a microfinance organization to a regulated bank in Haiti. The literature was helpful as far as some of the procedures were concerned, and the organization was able to use the recommendations. However the researchers found some major omissions in those recommendations as far as infrastructure was concerned. In some developing countries, it is impossible to install PCs because there is no electricity. Similarly network connections and access to the Internet without telephone service would be impossible. A comparison is made between the recommendations and the realities of the environment in Haiti. Future implementations could benefit from the findings of the authors.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

Teaching Architectural Approach to Quality Software Development through Problem-Based Learning

Kam Hou Vat
University of Macau, Macau, China
fstkhv@umac.mo

This paper describes the initiative to incorporate the practice of quality software development (QSD) into our undergraduate curriculum concerning the engineering of software. We discuss how the constructivist’s method of problem-based learning (PBL) helps develop this QSD practice into our students’ daily learning. This paper expounds the idea of an architectural approach to building software solutions, which is supported by the industry’s emerging consensus that architectural components provide the kind of building blocks we need for developing today’s complex systems. Particularly, the technology of component-based development asks of us the required portions of productivity, quality, and rapid construction of software artifacts. Consequently, our pedagogic approach to QSD focuses on designing and building a sensible architecture characterized by objects of different services, which represent the cohesive collections of related functionality, accessed through some consistent interfaces that encapsulate the implementation. The paper outlines an QSD approach in terms of state-of-the-practice development processes modified for educational scenarios, through which our students could learn to acquire their collaborative software engineering experience in the current practice of architected application development. The paper concludes by discussing the criteria used to evaluate the working of the learning scenario and some lessons learned involved in incorporating PBL learning scenarios suitable for QSD.

Keywords: Quality Software Development, Component-Based Development, Problem-Based Learning

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W5                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

Creating Informative Data Warehouses: Exploring Data and Information Quality through Data Mining

Herna L. Viktor and Wayne M. Motha
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, Republic of South Africa

hlviktor@hakuna.up.ac.za  wmotha@hakuna.up.ac.za

Increasingly, large organizations are engaging in data warehousing projects in order to achieve a competitive advantage through the exploration of the information as contained therein. It is therefore paramount to ensure that the data warehouse includes high quality data. However, practitioners agree that the improvement of the quality of data in an organization is a daunting task. This is especially evident in data warehousing projects, which are often initiated “after the fact”. The slightest suspicion of poor quality data often hinders managers from reaching decisions, when they waste hours in discussions to determine what portion of the data should be trusted. Augmenting data warehousing with data mining methods offers a mechanism to explore these vast repositories, enabling decision makers to assess the quality of their data and to unlock a wealth of new knowledge. These methods can be effectively used with inconsistent, noisy and incomplete data that are commonplace in data warehouses.

Keywords:  Data warehouse, Data mining, Data and Information Quality

 
Philosophical Issues
in Room W6                  on Thursday, 20 June 11:00-12:30 

Informing IT Managers – Why the Bank for International Settlements is Establishing a Capital Charge Guideline for Operational Risk:  the Australian Evidence

Christopher Viney
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

cviney@deakin.edu.au

IT managers within financial institutions must understand and be able to respond to the operational, financial and regulatory impacts that will result from a loss of critical business functions. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, through the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has circulated a consultative paper which, if eventually adopted by nation-state bank supervisors, will impose an operational risk capital charge on banks as part of the new Capital Accord. Banks will also be required to record and report operational risk occurrences or events. This paper presents data on aspects of the disaster risk management practices of banks operating within the Australian financial system. The data indicate that banks, as a group, do not maintain effective disaster risk management practices and are not adequately prepared to recover a loss of critical business functions. The results clearly support the necessity of the BIS initiatives.

Keywords: operational risk, disaster risk management, financial institutions capital accord

 
Technology
in Room W7                      on Friday, 21 June 9:00-10:30 

Data Mining in Computer Auditing

Teh Ying Wah , Mustaffa Kamal Mohd Nor ,
Zaitun Abu Bakar  and Lee Sai Peck
University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

tehyw@fsktm.um.edu.my 
mustaffa@fsktm.um.edu.my 
zaitun@fsktm.um.edu.my
saipeck@fsktm.um.edu.my

In this paper, we first introduce the readers about the main function of a computer auditor. This is followed by a description of auditing the usage of stationeries in the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya. It is a very time consuming process to audit all stationeries.  Therefore, we introduce the data mining techniques to help us find the relevant stationeries. We use this information to recommend purchasers to purchase relevant items together in order to achieve efficiently in purchasing stationeries process.

Keywords: Web-Based Environment, Personalisation, Data Mining, Computer Auditing and Association Rules.

 
Information Science & Library
in Room W7                  on Thursday, 20 June 13:45-15:15 

MERLOT: 
Multimedia Educational Resource
for Learning and Online Teaching

Terry L. Weech
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

weech@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu

The paper discusses the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) project http://www.merlot.org, which is designed to provide faculty with a source for peer evaluations of online learning modules in specified disciplines. The various aspects of the web based MERLOT are explained and suggestions are made as to how librarians and educators can use MERLOT in their work.  Special emphasis will be placed on how librarians can utilize MERLOT to educate faculty on access and assessment of online learning modules and integrate library resources into the curriculum in academic institutions.

Keywords:  Online Teaching, Evaluation of learning modules, Review on Teaching Materials, Library-College Concept, Library Use Instruction.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Lessons in Reality: Teaching Project Management, Professionalism and Ethics to Third Year IT Students

Vicky Wilson
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia

v.wilson@ecu.edu.au

It is widely accepted amongst tertiary educators that IT students need first hand experience of working in teams and in managing projects if they are to be effective in the workplace.  In 2001 the School of Computer and Information Science at Edith Cowan University undertook a major restructure of its courses that resulted in the development of eight ‘core’ units that are taught in a range of courses across the School.  One of these was a third-year unit called ‘Project Management, Professionalism and Ethics’.  This case study documents the research that was undertaken to determine the unit content and its subsequent development and delivery.  It discusses the formal and informal feedback received from students and staff after its delivery in semester 2, 2001 and what will be done to develop the unit into a fully integrated online ‘situated learning’ experience.

Keywords: Situated learning, IT education, learning theory, course design and delivery.

 
Education and IT Education
in Room W9                     on Friday, 21 June 11:00-12:30 

The Evolution of a B.S. Internet/Web
Program at Purdue University Calumet

Charles R. Winer and John Maniotes
Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN 46323 USA

winer@calumet.purdue.edu  maniotes@calumet.purdue.edu

The growth of the Internet and the impact of the Community College system in Indiana have had a profound impact on the traditional two and four year programs in Computer Information Systems (CIS).  Purdue University Calumet has recognized this impact and has revised and implemented an innovative Internet/Web B.S. program and related courses to support it.  The B.S. program was developed and refined with input from the University’s local business/industry advisory committee.  This paper presents the new four year Internet/Web B.S. program, which gives students a strong foundation in basic concepts and a high degree of employability.

Keywords:  IT Curriculum, Internet/Web Programs, E-Commerce, E-Business

 
Justice, Law and Public Policy
in Room W6                     on Friday, 21 June 13:45-15:15 

Encountering Encrypted Evidence (potential)

Henry B. Wolfe
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

hwolfe@commerce.otago.ac.nz

Investigative activities involving computer related cases occasionally encounter files that have been encrypted. Encryption is a valid and legal process that enables anyone to protect the privacy of his or her data and/or communications. If the suspect is cooperative and provides not only the key but also the specific encryption software, investigation is simple. However, without that cooperation, analysis of potential evidence may not be practical or possible. This paper discusses alternatives where the suspect is not cooperative and keys are not provided. The outcome of the investigation may as well depend on what resources are available to the investigator.