Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

Drip - Data Rich, Information Poor: A Concise Synopsis Of Data Mining, Muhammad Obeidat, Max North, Lloyd Burgess, Sarah North

Faculty Articles

As production of data is exponentially growing with a drastically lower cost, the importance of data mining required to extract and discover valuable information is becoming more paramount. To be functional in any business or industry, data must be capable of supporting sound decision-making and plausible prediction. The purpose of this paper is concisely but broadly to provide a synopsis of the technology and theory of data mining, providing an enhanced comprehension of the methods by which massive data can be transferred into meaningful information.

Promoting Information Systems Major To Undergraduate Students - A Comprehensive Investigation, Lei Li, Chi Zhang, Guangzhi Zheng

Faculty Articles

Weak enrollment growth has been a concern for many Information Systems (IS) programs in recent years although the IT/IS job market remains strong. Stimulating undergraduate students’ interest to IS programs have been a challenge. In this paper, the researchers took a comprehensive approach to study how to effectively promote a Management Information Systems (MIS) program to undergraduate students at a medium-size public university in the southeastern US. Using a survey-based method, the researchers first investigated the factors that impact students’ selection of majors and identified students’ perceptions on an MIS program. In this paper, an MIS program promotion strategy was …

Developing Health Information Technology (Hit) Programs And Hit Curriculum: The Southern Polytechnic State University Experience, Chi Zhang, Han Reichgelt, Rebecca H. Rutherfoord, Andy Ju An Wang

Faculty Articles

Health Information Technology (HIT) professionals are in increasing demand as healthcare providers need help in the adoption and meaningful use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems while the HIT industry needs workforce skilled in HIT and EHR development. To respond to this increasing demand, the School of Computing and Software Engineering at Southern Polytechnic State University designed and implemented a series of HIT educational programs. This paper summarizes our experience in the HIT curriculum development and provides an overview of HIT workforce development initiatives and major HIT and health information management (HIM) educational resources. It also provides instructional implications and …

Unraveling The Digital Literacy Paradox: How Higher Education Fails At The Fourth Literacy., Meg Coffin Murray, Jorge Perez

Faculty Articles

Governments around the globe are recognizing the economic ramifications of a digitally literate citizenry and implementing systemic strategies to advance digital literacy. Awareness of the growing importance of digital literacy in today’s workplace coexists paradoxically with apparent foot-dragging on the part of many universities in assessment and amplification of these important competencies. This paper makes a case for digital literacy, presents models of the complex construct, and presents the results of a digital literacy assessment administered to students enrolled in a senior seminar course at a regional university in the United States. Reflection on the study results evoked our mantra …

Analysis Of A Scholarly Social Networking Site: The Case Of The Dormant User, Meg Murray

Faculty Articles

Many scholarly social networking sites targeting an audience of academicians and researchers have appeared on the Internet in recent years. Their vision is to change the way researchers connect, share and collaborate to solve real world problems. Despite the hype, however, their impact on higher education is unclear. Studies exist that address the benefits of these sites, but studies that investigate the implications of how scholarly social networking systems vet information, including data related to user profiles and uploaded content, is nonexistent. This paper chronicles the system management of user information for an inactive user of a scholarly social networking …

The Adoption Of E-Learning Systems In Low Income Countries: The Case Of Ethiopia, Yonas Hagos, Solomon Negash

Faculty Articles

This paper presents the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to examine the adoption of e-learning system in low-income countries, the case of Ethiopia. The research uses a quantitative research approach to examine Ethiopian tertiary level distance students’ determinant factors for the acceptance of e-learning systems. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to collect data from 255 undergraduate distance learners in a higher education institute in Ethiopia. The data were analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) (Hair et al, 2005) technique to examine the causal model. The results indicated that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use significantly affected distance learners’ behavioral …

Rethinking Fs-Isac: An It Security Information Sharing Network Model For The Financial Services Sector, Charles Zhechao Liu, Humayun Zafar, Yoris A. Au

Faculty Articles

This study examines a critical incentive alignment issue facing FS-ISAC (the information sharing alliance in the financial services industry). Failure to encourage members to share their IT security-related information has seriously undermined the founding rationale of FS-ISAC. Our analysis shows that many information sharing alliances’ membership policies are plagued with the incentive misalignment issue and may result in a “free-riding” or “no information sharing” equilibrium. To address this issue, we propose a new information sharing membership policy that incorporates an insurance option and show that the proposed policy can align members’ incentives and lead to a socially optimal outcome. Moreover, …

A Comparative Review Of Information Technology Project Management In Private And Public Sector Organization, Muhammad Obeidat, Max North

Faculty Articles

Both private and public sector organizations tend to recognize the prominence of information technology within project management techniques and practices. The primary objective of this paper is to present a comparative review of information technology within project management in private and public sectors. Moreover, this research provides an extensive review of related topics such as the evolution of information technology, factors contributing to project abandonment, and the tools and techniques of management that effect project success. In conclusion, the authors present a variety of practical and effective guidelines and recommend approaches for the successful deployment of information technology within project …

Student Interaction With Content In Online And Hybrid Courses: Leading Horses To The Proverbial Water, Meg Murray, Jorge Perez, Debra Geist, Alison Hedrick

Faculty Articles

Permutations of traditional and online learning are rapidly advancing along a blended continuum, prompting conjecture that learning and e-learning will soon be indistinguishable. As variations of blended learning evolve, educators worldwide must develop better understanding of how effective interaction with course content impacts engagement and learning. This study compares patterns of access to instructional content in online and hybrid courses offered at a regional university in the United States. Frequency counts and access rates were examined for course content in four categories: core materials, direct support, indirect support, and ancillary materials. Observed results were echoed in responses to a survey …

Towards Self-Emancipation In Ict For Development Research: Narratives About Respect, Traditional Leadership And Building Networks Of Friendships In Rural South Africa, Kirstin Krauss

The African Journal of Information Systems

In this paper, the author contends that if the outsider-researcher involved in Information and Communication Technology for Development really wants to make a difference and honestly address the emancipatory interests of the developing community, social transformation will have to occur on both sides of the “development divide.” This statement implies both an understanding of the researcher’s own ethnocentrism, prejudice, assumptions and inabilities as well as local concerns, needs, expectations and realities. Using critical social theory as a position of inquiry and learning from the enculturation phases of critical ethnographic fieldwork in a deep rural part of South Africa, the paper …

Georgia Knowledge Repository: Potential For The State, Marlee Givens

Giving Undergraduate Research a Worldwide Voice: Institutional Repositories as Publishers

A presentation on the Georgia Knowledge Repository, a search engine of Georgia-based institutional repositories.

More information at http://www.library.gatech.edu/gkr/

Underfunded And Understaffed: A Ground-Level View Of Ir Creation In Difficult Times, John Davison

Giving Undergraduate Research a Worldwide Voice: Institutional Repositories as Publishers

A discussion of the creation of OhioLINK, the institutional repository system for the Ohio University system.

More information at http://drc.ohiolink.edu/

An Approach To Nearest Neighboring Search For Multi-Dimensional Data, Yong Shi, Li Zhang, Lei Zhu

Faculty Articles

Finding nearest neighbors in large multi-dimensional data has always been one of the research interests in data mining field. In this paper, we present our continuous research on similarity search problems. Previously we have worked on exploring the meaning of K nearest neighbors from a new perspective in PanKNN [20]. It redefines the distances between data points and a given query point Q, efficiently and effectively selecting data points which are closest to Q. It can be applied in various data mining fields. A large amount of real data sets have irrelevant or obstacle information which greatly affects the effectiveness …

The Mississippi Digital Library’S Civil Rights Thesaurus: An Evolving Authority Control Tool For Civil Rights-Related Headings In Metadata Records, Kathleen L. Wells

The Southeastern Librarian

The online Civil Rights Thesaurus (CRT) at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) had its beginnings in the digitization of civil rights materials in the university’s McCain Library and Archives in the early 2000s. The materials included oral history interviews, letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other items from the rich history of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, including materials from the Freedom Summer of 1964. In addition to the creation of digitized images, making these materials available online as the Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive included the formulation of descriptive records using Dublin Core metadata and the development …

A Call To Is Educators To Respond To The Voices Of Women In Information Security, Amy B. Woszczynski, Sherri Shade

Faculty Articles

Much prior research has examined the dearth of women in the IT industry. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of women in IT within the context of information security and assurance. This paper describes results from a study of a relatively new career path to see if there are female-friendly opportunities that have not existed in previous IT career paths. Research methodology focuses on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with women who are self-described information security professionals. A primary goal of the study is to understand the perceptions of women in information security and determine …

Save Gas Using Your Office Computer From Home, Steve Duckworth, Damon Armour, Jeff Heck

Georgia Library Quarterly

The article discusses the protocols used to establish remote computer connections from home. The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) used in Windows 7 connecting to a Windows 2008 server reportedly allows the playing of high-definition video using Media Player. It is stated that commercial product connections which may bypass security infrastructure are risky because of the home computer's possible insecurity and that home devices used for business purposes may be legally searched by the state.

Database Security: What Students Need To Know, Meg C. Murray

Faculty Articles

Database security is a growing concern evidenced by an increase in the number of reported incidents of loss of or unauthorized exposure to sensitive data. As the amount of data collected, retained and shared electronically expands, so does the need to understand database security. The Defense Information Systems Agency of the US Department of Defense (2004), in its Database Security Technical Implementation Guide, states that database security should provide controlled, protected access to the contents of a database as well as preserve the integrity, consistency, and overall quality of the data. Students in the computing disciplines must develop an …

Animated Courseware Support For Teaching Database Design, Meg C. Murray, Mario Guimaraes

Faculty Articles

Database technologies are a core component of computing technology curricula. Their importance will only continue to expand as more and more data are retained in database systems. An effective database system is predicated on a good data model. Database design is the conceptualization of an underlying data model that progresses from identifying user requirements to graphically depicting those requirements and finally mapping the graphical models to a set of tables implemented in a physical database system. The abstract nature of much of database design makes it challenging to teach. This paper presents a set of software animations designed to support …

Animated Database Courseware: Using Animations To Extend Conceptual Understanding Of Database Concepts, Meg Murray, Mario Guimaraes

Faculty Articles

Teaching abstract concepts can be best supported with supplemental instructional materials such as software animations. Visualization and animations have been shown to increase student motivation and help students develop deeper understandings. Through an NSF funded CCLI grant, a set of animations to support the teaching of database concepts is being developed and made freely available. Current modules available cover areas such as database design, interactive SQL, stored procedures and triggers, transactions and database security. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Animated Database Courseware (ADbC) as well as provide examples of how this software might be utilized in …

After The System Upgrade Or Migration: A Cataloging Checklist, Sheryl Stump, Rick Torgerson

The Southeastern Librarian

At present. integrated library system (ILS) upgrades and migrations seem to be coming faster and more frequently. The reasons for this trend are many. among them being: 1) hardware upgrades are common due to the need for more memory to run the software; 2) software upgrades and migrations are desired because of the promise of new or improved features; 3) changes in system vendor ownership can affect changes in their software; 4) software and hardware upgrades are needed due to the advanced age of either or both; and 5) system upgrades on a yearly basis may be necessary to prevent …

Metadata Basics: A Literature Survey And Subject Analysis, Nicole Mitchell

The Southeastern Librarian

Librarians today are wrestling with an everchanging digital environment. In some way oranother, we must all adapt to new technologies, skills, and ways of thinking. What comes to mind when you hear the word “metadata?” Is itintimidating? Do metadatists and catalogers explain the term adequately? While this articleby no means captures all there is about metadata, it is intended to provide librarians with a basic understanding of what is involved in metadatawork.

Personality And Programming, Amy B. Woszczynski, Tracy C. Guthrie, Sherri Shade

Faculty Articles

Information systems students continue to struggle to successfully complete computer programming classes. Learning how to program is difficult, and failure and attrition rates in college level programming classes remain at an unacceptably high rate. Since many IS students take a programming course as part of their program of study, IS educators should better understand why IS students tend to achieve low success rates in programming courses and what can be done to improve success rates. Little research to date has addressed potential reasons for student failure in programming principles courses. Many educators simply assume that high failure rates are acceptable …

Enemy At The Gate: Threats To Information Security, Michael E. Whitman

Faculty Articles

A firm can build more effective security strategies by identifying and ranking the severity of potential threats to its IS efforts.

Considerations For An Effective Telecommunications-Use Policy, Michael E. Whitman, Anthony M. Townsend, Robert J. Aalberts

Faculty Articles

Recent changes in federal telecommunications legislation have underscored the importance of an up-to-date and effective telecommunications-use policy in business organizations. With the proliferation of the Internet, intranets, and email as commonplace business tools, the potential for misuse and subsequent liability has become an increasing concern. Even though the recent Supreme Court decision struck down the obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), it left intact legislation that effectively mandates development of a sound telecommunications-use policy. In addition to potential liability for systems misuse, organizations have also had to address issues of individual employee privacy within the new systems.

This …