Targeting Teaching & Learning

Turner College faculty continue to be at the forefront of research that extends teaching and learning in their individual disciplines.  A prime example is forthcoming research on academic dishonesty by assistant professor of management Mark James and his colleagues Gloria Miller, of Austin Peay State University, and Tyler Wyckoff, of Bank of the Sierra.  James and his colleagues study 401 students in order to identify common motivations for Chinese students to plagiarize on written English assignments.  According to their analysis, the most significant factor relating to likelihood to self-report plagiarism for Chinese students is the belief in a “standard answer,” which represents the correct answer to a given question.  Moreover, students who believe that imitation of experts is important to learning are more likely to self-report plagiarism, while business students are generally more likely to self-report plagiarism than non-business students.  As the authors conclude, their research, which appears in a future issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, provides key insights into the English writing plagiarism behaviors of Chinese students studying in Western-style higher education institutions.

In research appearing in the 2017 Proceedings of the ACM SIFCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, TSYS School assistant professor Yesem Peker points out that although cryptography is a major area of study that provides mechanisms to achieve confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and non-repudiation in information and computer security, teaching cryptography is often challenging due to the mathematics forming the foundation of the subject.  Peker’s study introduces the basic functions and terminology of cryptography without delving into the mathematics through separate teaching modules focusing on symmetric key encryption, public key cryptography, hash functions, and digital signatures and certificates.  Each module begins with a presentation of the topic and proceeds to various hands-on activities.  Finally, the study provides computer science instructors with access to presentations and hands-on exercises as well as supplementary material such as assignments for students and questions for assessment.   

Pedagogical research by TSYS School faculty Yien Wang and Jianhua Yang asserts that the teaching of ethical hacking and vulnerability scanning is a key element to the success of a university’s cybersecurity curriculum.  Relatedly, their research, which appears in the 2017 Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Information Networking & Applications, both reviews the state of the art of current open source vulnerability scanning tools and introduces a virtual lab environment as part of an overall lab design for enhancing instruction related to understanding the vulnerabilities in a computer system.  The researchers also provide the details of their hands-on lab design through use of the vulnerability scanning tool known as OpenVAS.  To support their work, the study reviews learning outcomes after conducting the hands-on labs in their own cybersecurity courses at Columbus State University.

That same 2017 Proceedings also offers additional pedagogical research by Yang and his colleagues Yongzhong Zhang of Shanghai Open University and Guoqing Zhao of the Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology that proposes five separate modules for integrating the most popular stepping-stone intrusion detection techniques into the cybersecurity curriculum.  The study first summarizes the various stepping-stone intrusion detection processes, and proceeds by developing 10 labs on separate topics, such as creating a stepping-stone intrusion, comparing thumbprints, estimating the length of a connection chain, and identifying crossover packets, that are designed to help students to further assimilate the techniques on stepping-stone intrusion and its detection.

Lastly, Yang teamed with TSYS School Chair Wayne Summers and Dianyuan Han of Weifang University on additional research published in the 2017 Proceedings that focuses on the recent trend of offering courses on steganography techniques in cybersecurity curricula.  These researchers develop various stenography modules and hands-on labs that are designed to integrate the principles of steganography, steganographic techniques, and steganalysis into university degree programs in cybersecurity. Three of the lab exercises include steganography implementation in HTML, TCP/IP, and digital images. 

Recent research by Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon and his colleagues Carlos Asarta, of the University of Delaware, and Steven Caudill, of Florida Atlantic University, points out the difficulty that economics instructors often face in terms of identifying pedagogical examples that are relatable to the majority of their students.  To address this issue, their study appearing in a 2017 issue of International Review of Economics Education presents a timely and engaging example of a “public good” – Patreon music creations.  Patreon is an Internet company that offers an outlet for financially supporting independent musicians who share their YouTube-based music creations with fans.  The study defines and illustrates the characteristics that make these musical creations “public goods,” explaining also how music fans willingly support these creations from a financial standpoint even though they are available for viewing through YouTube without charge.

TSYS School faculty Rania Hodhod and Hillary Fleenor collaborated on research published in the 2017 Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics that responds to the initiative to enhance computer science education from both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  These researchers describe the results of a text mining process that analyzes the academic literature in order to find trends for designing educational games that enhance computer science education, in addition to identifying existing gaps in the curricula, each of which make use of Voyant, a text mining tool.  Their analysis of the text mining results from 204 published studies provides insight into how learning theories have been used in computer science education and guides future research by identifying various learning theories that should be considered in designing educational games that are used to teach computer science topics, such as data structures.