Journal of
Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
HOME   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   RELATED PUBLICATIONS   |   SEARCH     CONTACT US
 

 ISSN: 1690-4524 (Online)



TABLE OF CONTENTS





Self-Concept Development in Inclusive Classroom Settings focusing on Children with and without Visual Impairment
Sarah Wieckert
Pages: 1-3
ABSTRACT:
The encouragement of the development of a realistic self-concept of the children in their classes is an important challenge for school teachers. Children who know about their strengths and weaknesses can work on the competences, which need to be improved, more effectively. This contribution presents a study which focuses on the special time of first-grade when primary school children get to know their new learning environment. In that context a survey takes place in Germany and accompanies children with and without special needs in the field of vision which learn together in school.


An Attempt to Employ Diagrammatic Illustrations in Teaching English Grammar: Pictorial English Grammar
Kaoru Takahashi
Pages: 4-9
ABSTRACT:
In order for intermediate students poor at English grammar to enjoy learning it, a unique methodology has been improved in the classroom. In this article illustrated vehicles relevant to the five basic sentence patterns are presented in order to show how helpful this method is to understand English grammar. Also, more enhanced areas of this theory are discussed, which clarifies the feasibility of this methodology. The items to be introduced in my method are gerund, the passive voice, the relative pronoun and so on.


Keeping Up with the Reality Show: A Ten-Years-Later Review of Surviving Teaching on the Internet
M. Louise Ripley
Pages: 10-15
ABSTRACT:
A dozen years ago, I set out to teach my first Internet course at York University, a large urban Canadian university with 55,000+ students who are mainly commuters. Two years later I wrote an article titled, “Survivor!: When the Next Reality Show is You Teaching Your First Internet Course”, in which I argued that there are ten major things you should not do when teaching on the Internet. Now ten years later, in this paper I revisit those recommendations to see if they still hold true, and to see if we need to add any new ones.


A Framework for Soft Skills Training in Science and Engineering
Amos O. Olagunju, Jake S. Soenneker
Pages: 16-21
ABSTRACT:
Ask the graduates and the employers of graduates of computing information sciences and engineering (CISE) one area in which more formal training would have been beneficial while still in college. It is not surprising that both the employers and the graduates often agree that students require more training in discipline-specific soft skills (DSSS) in CISE. Yet, the requirements for undergraduate DSSS in CISE remain an open subject for debate. Should all undergraduate core courses be revised to incorporate DSSS requirements? Should DSSS be designed for infusion into the technical core courses for undergraduates in CISE? How should student learning outcomes (SLOs) for DSSS be defined and assessed? This paper discusses these and further questions.


Source Code Plagiarism in Computer Engineering Courses
Wolfgang Granzer, Friedrich Praus, Peter Balog
Pages: 22-26
ABSTRACT:
In today’s university life, teachers are often confronted with plagiarism. A special form of plagiarism is source code plagiarism typically found in programming courses at universities and schools. Detecting or even preventing source code plagiarism is by no means a trivial task. Therefore, this paper explains and discusses different methods that can be used to prevent and detect source code plagiarism. The second part of this paper is focused on automatic tools that assist in detecting plagiarism. Finally, an approach is presented which can be used to detect source code plagiarism in PLC (programmable logic controller) programs.


Completing the Experience: Debriefing in Experiential Educational Games
Scott Nicholson
Pages: 27-31
ABSTRACT:
Good educational game design is about providing an engaging experience for learners. Experiential training games have been used in fields such as medicine, business, outdoor adventures and military operations for decades. Research from these fields demonstrates the importance of including debriefing activities to help the learners consider what was learned and how that learning can be connected to previous learning and experiences in their lives. Most educational games do not include debriefing activities. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of these models of debriefing and to present a variety of methods that educational software creators can use to include debriefing in their experiential educational games.


Electrochemistry Experiments to Develop Novel Sensors for Real-World Applications
Suzanne Lunsford, Miyong Hughes, Phuong Khanh Quoc Nguyen
Pages: 32-35
ABSTRACT:
These novel STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) Electrochemistry experiments have been designed to increase the integrated science content, pedagogical, and technological knowledge for real-world applications. This study has focused on (1) the fundamental understanding on the relationship of metal oxide films and polymers to electrochemical sensors, and (2) the development of new materials which have great application of electrode materials. Following the inquiry based learning strategy the research students learn to develop and study the electrode surfaces to meet the needs of stability and low detection limits. Recently, new advances in environmental health are revealing the anthropogenic or naturally occurring harmful organic chemicals in sources of water supply expose a great health threat to human and aquatic life. Due to their well-known carcinogenic and lethal properties, the presence of human produced toxic chemicals such as phenol and its derivatives poses a critical threat to human health and aquatic life in such water resources. In order to achieve effective assessment and monitoring of these toxic chemicals there is a need to develop in-situ (electrochemical sensors) methods to detect rapidly. Electrochemical sensors have attracted more attention to analytical chemist and electrochemistry engineers due to its simplicity, rapidness and high sensitivity. However, there will be real challenges of achieving successful analysis of chemicals (phenol) in the presence of common interferences in water resources, which will be discussed regarding the students challenging learning experiences in developing an electrochemical sensor. The electrochemical sensor developed (TiO2 , ZrO2 or sol-gel mixture TiO2/ZrO2) will be illustrated and the successes will be shown by cyclic voltammetry data in detection of 1,2-dihydroxybenzenes (catechol, dopamine and phenol).


A Study of Thermal Performance of Contemporary Technology-Rich Educational Spaces
Sarah Elmasry, Ahmed Hassan, Mahmoud Haggag
Pages: 36-39
ABSTRACT:
One of the most dominant features of a classroom space is its high occupancy, which results in high internal heat gain (approximately 5 KW). Furthermore, installation of educational technologies, such as smart boards, projectors and computers in the spaces increases potential internal heat gain. Previous studies on office buildings indicate that with the introduction of IT equipment in spaces during the last decade, cooling load demands are increasing with an associated increase in summer electrical demand. Due to the fact that educational technologies in specific correspond to pedagogical practices within the space, a lot of variations due to occupancy patterns occur. Also, thermal loads caused by educational technologies are expected to be dependent on spatial configuration, for example, position with respect to the external walls, lighting equipment, mobility of devices. This study explores the thermal impact of educational technologies in 2 typical educational spaces in a facility of higher education; the classroom and the computer lab. The results indicate that a heat gain ranging between 0.06 and 0.095 KWh/m2 is generated in the rooms when educational technologies are in use. The second phase of this study is ongoing, and investigates thermal zones within the rooms due to distribution of educational technologies. Through simulation of thermal performance of the rooms, alternative room configurations are thus recommended in response to the observed thermal zones.



Computational Simulation of the Flow Past an Airfoil for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
L. Velázquez-Araque, J. Nožicka
Pages: 40-46
ABSTRACT:
This paper deals with the numerical simulation of the two-dimensional, incompressible, steady air flow past a NACA 2415 airfoil and four modifications of this one. The modification of this airfoil was made in order to create a blowing outlet with the shape of a step on the suction surface. Therefore, five different locations along the cord line for this blowing outlet were analyzed. This analysis involved the aerodynamic performance which meant obtaining lift, drag and pitching moment coefficients curves as a function of the angle of attack for the situation where the engine of the aerial vehicle is turned off called the no blowing condition by means computational fluid dynamics. The RNG k-e model is utilized to describe the turbulent flow process. The simulations were held at a Reynolds number of 105. Results allowed obtaining lift and drag forces and pitching moment coefficient and also the location of the separation and reattachment point in some cases for different angles of attack, from 0 to 16 degrees with the smallest increment of 4 degrees. Finally, numerical results were compared with results obtained from wind tunnel tests by means of an aerodynamic balance and also oil and smoke visualization techniques and found to be in very good agreement.


GRAS: A Group Reliant Authentication Scheme for V2V Communication in VANET
Auxeeliya Jesudoss, S.V. Kasmir Raja, Sung Han Park
Pages: 47-52
ABSTRACT:
Unlike fixed or wired networks, mobile ad-hoc networks pose a number of challenges for peer-to-peer communication due to their dynamic nature. This paper presents a novel framework for vehicleto- vehicle communication controlled and facilitated by a group leader within a group of vehicles. A communication model for a pure ad-hoc network is developed with much concern about the privacy and security of the system, for the ease of effective communication between vehicles with a reduced communication and computational overhead when no fixed infrastructure is present in the roadsides. In the proposed protocol, vehicles within a radio frequency form a group. They elect their leader based on some criteria who is then responsible for generating a group public and private key pair. Each vehicle is equipped with a tamper resistant OBU which is capable of generating public/private keys pairs and also self-certifies the generated keys based on one way hash chaining technique. Any vehicle joins the group communicates the group leader, authenticates itself to obtain the group key. Later, the vehicle uses the group key to send traffic related messages to the group leader who is responsible for batch verifying the authenticity of the message from different sources and one hop broadcast them to reduce the computation overhead on message verification in each vehicle. In addition, our scheme adopts the k-anonymity approach to protect user identity privacy, where an attacker cannot associate a message with the sending vehicle. Extensive analysis and simulations show that the proposed architecture provides an efficient and fully self organized system management for car-to-car communication without the need of any external infrastructure.


RPD: Reusable Pseudo-Id Distribution for a Secure and Privacy Preserving VANET
Sulaiman Ashraph, S.V. Kasmir Raja, Sung Han Park
Pages: 53-59
ABSTRACT:
In any VANET, security and privacy are the two fundamental issues. Obtaining efficient security in vehicular communication is essential without compromising privacy-preserving mechanisms. Designing a suitable protocol for VANET by having these two issues in mind is challenging because efficiency, unlinkablity and traceability are the three qualities having contradictions between them. In this paper, we introduce an efficient Reusable Pseudo-id Distribution (RPD) scheme. The Trusted Authority (TA) designating the Road Side Units (RSUs) to generate n reusable pseudo ids and distribute them to the On Board Units (OBUs) on request characterizes the proposed protocol. RSUs issue the aggregated hashes of all its valid pseudo-ids along with a symmetric shared key and a particular pseudo-id to each vehicle that enters into its coverage range. Through this the certificates attached to the messages can be eliminated and thus resulting in a significantly reduced packet size. The same anonymous keys can then be re-distributed by the RSUs episodically to other vehicles. We analyze the proposed protocol extensively to demonstrate its merits and efficiency.


Towards a Common Research Strategic Roadmap for the Transportation Sector in Europe and beyond
Evangelos Bekiaris, Matina Loukea, Steve Phillips, Wolfgang Steinicke
Pages: 60-64
ABSTRACT:
DETRA (Developing a European Transport Research Alliance) is a 7th Framework project, whose concept derived from the so-called Lyon Declaration and concerns the deepening of the European Research Area objectives in transport in order to address the Grand Challenges. Key priorities of this Alliance is to examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in the domain and develop common understanding and approaches to reducing fragmentation and overcoming barriers. The DETRA project aimed to meet and exceed the requirements and objectives of the call for an Analysis of the state of ERA development within the transport domain and to develop recommendations for the EC, member states and other stakeholders as well as for the DETRA partner organizations themselves. In this study, particular emphasis is given to the part of DETRA concerning the development of a single trans- European research program, which can be used as a compass for the future research activities of the whole transportation area.


Network Intrusion Detection System – A Novel Approach
Krish Pillai
Pages: 65-70
ABSTRACT:
Network intrusion starts off with a series of unsuccessful breakin attempts and results eventually with the permanent or transient failure of an authentication or authorization system. Due to the current complexity of authentication systems, clandestine attempts at intrusion generally take considerable time before the system gets compromised or damaging change is affected to the system giving administrators a window of opportunity to proactively detect and prevent intrusion. Therefore maintaining a high level of sensitivity to abnormal access patterns is a very effective way of preventing possible break-ins. Under normal circumstances, gross errors on the part of the user can cause authentication and authorization failures on all systems. A normal distribution of failed attempts should be tolerated while abnormal attempts should be recognized as such and flagged. But one cannot manage what one cannot measure. This paper proposes a method that can efficiently quantify the behaviour of users on a network so that transient changes in usage can be detected, categorized based on severity, and closely investigated for possible intrusion. The author proposes the identification of patterns in protocol usage within a network to categorize it for surveillance. Statistical anomaly detection, under which category this approach falls, generally uses simple statistical tests such as mean and standard deviation to detect behavioural changes. The author proposes a novel approach using spectral density as opposed to using time domain data, allowing a clear separation or access patterns based on periodicity. Once a spectral profile has been identified for network, deviations from this profile can be used as an indication of a destabilized or compromised network. Spectral analysis of access patterns is done using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), which can be computed in T(N log N) operations. The paper justifies the use of this approach and presents preliminary results of studies the author has conducted on a restricted campus network. The paper also discusses how profile deviations of the network can be used to trigger a more exhaustive diagnostic setup that can be a very effective first-line of defense for any network.


Developing Course Assessment Tool to Measure the Degree of Achieving Course Learning Outcomes
Mohammad Alhassan, Suleiman Ashur
Pages: 71-74
ABSTRACT:
The civil engineering program at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), established in the fall of 2006, is the most recent addition to the Department of Engineering, which offers B.S. degrees in civil, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering. A key component for a successful program is to establish and implement an effective assessment process to measure the degree of achieving program outcomes, identifying weaknesses, and recommending improvements. In December 2008, the Civil Engineering Assessment Plan (CEAP) was developed based on the department’s existing “one-assessment-plan-fits-all” format that was developed for all programs in 2004. Currently, there is a need to depart from this approach and modify the current plan to take into consideration the individual needs of each program. A major deficiency in the current plan is the process of evaluating course outcomes, which lacks consistency and documentation.

The goal of this paper is to present a new tool developed to improve the assessment and address ABET criteria for developing an assessment-based improvement system capable of establishing consistency in the assessment process, create a better documentation process, and measure the effectiveness of educational and learning of engineering students. A new faculty assessment form developed to document assessment data and provide an analysis of assessment results for course outcomes is also presented. The faculty members acknowledged the effectiveness and ease of use of the new tool that helped in improving assessment at the department level and supported ABET accreditation of the new civil engineering program.


Scalability of Knowledge Transfer in Complex Systems of Emergent “living” Communities
Susu Nousala
Pages: 75-81
ABSTRACT:
Communities are emergent, holistic living systems. Understanding the impact of social complex systems through spatial interactions via the lens of scalability requires the development of new methodological behavioural approaches. The evolution of social complex systems of cities and their regions can be investigated through the evolution of spatial structures. The clustering of entities within cities, regions and beyond presents behavioural elements for which methodological approaches need to be considered.

The emergent aspect of complex entities by their very nature requires an understanding that can embrace unpredictability through emergence. Qualitative methodological approaches can be holistic with the ability to embrace bottom up and top down methods for analysis. Social complex systems develop structures by connecting “like minded” behaviour through scalability. How “mobile” these interactions are, is a concept that can be understood via “inter-organizational” and “interstructural” comparative approaches. How do we indeed convey this adequately or appropriately?

Just as a geographical area may contain characteristics that can help to support the formation of an emergent industry cluster, similar behaviours occur through emergent characteristics of complex systems that underpin the sustainability of an organization. The idea that complex systems have tacit structures, capable of displaying emergent behaviour, is not a common concept. These tacit structures can in turn, impact the structural sustainability of physical entities. More often than not, there is a focus on how these concepts of complex systems work, but the “why” questions depends upon scalability. Until recently, social complex adaptive systems were largely over looked due to the tacit nature of these network structures.


Quiz Lounge Game-Based Learning on Mobile Devices
Bettina Harriehausen-Mühlbauer
Pages: 82-87
ABSTRACT:
The Quiz Lounge project is a collaboration between Hochschule Darmstadt and Lufthansa AG. The goal of the project was the development of a mobile learning application. With the application, the Lufthansa managers should be able to learn about data privacy topics playfully and interactively. The application is based on a quiz concept and asks the user for answers to a series of ten questions which increase in difficulty level. While playing the game the user can use two “lifeline” helpers, the audience- and the 50-50-helper. Furthermore, the user has the ability to browse a glossary of related terms if he or she has the need of more detailed knowledge. New questions and also new games can be added with a web-based authoring tool. The authoring tool was uniquely developed for the Quiz Lounge application and conforms to the specific needs of its architecture.