Week 7

Mobile phones have become a necessity for many people throughout the world. The ability to keep in touch with family, business associates, and access to email are only a few of the reasons for the increasing importance of mobile phones. Today's technically advanced mobile phones are capable of not only receiving and placing phone calls, but storing data, taking pictures, and can even be used as walkie talkies, to name just a few of the available options (Kingston, 2004).

Mobile devices have gained a lot of importance in this fast paced world from being used in every walk of life. Mobile devices contain of mobile phones, Ipods, Laptops or even portable DVD players. A number of techniques can be used to identify the new innovations of these mobile devices for students.

The techniques used by me are research and personal observation. My research included internet, books and magazines and latest trends. Studying the current trend in using mobile phones, I have identified SMS (Short Messaging service) as a popular and economical service used among students.
Therefore, based on the above popularity, SMS can be used by students at CQU to get their results before checking it on the database. Other information like modification in lecture time tables, cancellation of lectures, happening events and activities in the university can be conveyed to the students through SMS.
Another innovation, I identified that would be beneficial for the students is a device where they can store their academic work like assignments and lecture notes as well as make instant notes, email and plan their powerpoint presentations. The device I am talking about is a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) which is not only small and weighs very little but it also can be used for making phone calls as well as SMS.

References

Kingston, K 2004, The Important of Cell Phones In Modern Society, viewed 19th December 2006,
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-Of-Cell-Phones-In-Modern-Society&id=7446

Northwestern University 2oo5, 'Northwestern Universtiy Information Technology', Standard PDA Features, viewed 19th December 2006,
http://www.it.northwestern.edu/hardware/pda/standard.html

Shelly, G. B; Cashman, T. J and Rosenblatt, H. J. (2006), ""System Analysis and Design", Thomson, 6th ed.

Week 5

Reference

Shelly, G. B; Cashman, T. J and Rosenblatt, H. J. (2006), ""System Analysis and Design", Thomson, 6th ed.

In three easy steps, a blog was created and registered for this course "Cois-20025" Systems development overview. Just by going to their easy to use web site www.blogger.com , and following the instruction on their web page. Firstly it is required to create an account. Cetain information is asked to be submitted at this time, like an existing email account address (hotmail /google) , first, last names, date of birth etc. The second step is that you select a password that you will use every time you need to sign in on to your blog. Thirdly you will be selecting the interface options and other user friendly features like back ground color and different kind of tempelates. Once you become an account holder, upon entering your email address and passwords you can get into your blog and publish it when ever you desire. For this course the univeristy web-space requires us to register with them by enter our blogger account address and details so it is easy to find a relvant person as blogger is not a private but a public domain.

Week 4

DATA DICTIONARY:

AMMS: It is used as data storage and it stands for Academic Misconduct Management System. This is CQU current system to check for academic misconducts.

EVIDENCE REPORT: It is the acknowledgement with the evidence of an academic misconduct.

FINAL RESULT: Is the outcome of a student's submitted work either in the form of an assignment or an appeal.

FINAL OFFENCE: It is the final acknowledge of the misconduct by a student.

FINAL INCIDENT: Is the final documentation of misconduct for university reference.

INCIDENTS: It acts as data storage for all the misconducts incidents that have been recorded for the university.

INCIDENT DETAIL: It is a document that contains all the information about the student and the misconduct committed.

INCIDENT REPORT: It is a report of misconduct by a student.

MISCONDUCT DETAIL: Is the information about of misconduct along with the student's detail.

OFFENCE DETAIL: It is the information assessed for the purpose of applying penalty.

OFFENCE REPORT: It is a report that an academic misconduct has occurred.

PENALTY REPORT: It contains the level of penalty given to the student for misconduct.

STUDENT APPEAL: Appeal made by a student to contest the misconduct decision.

STUDENT WORK: It is a student's assignment or an appeal.

SUBMITTED WORK: The assignments that have been submitted to the AMMS and the Appeal Department by the students.


REFERENCES

Shelly, G.B; Cashman, T.J and Rosenblatt, H.J. (2006), "System Analysis and Design", Thomson, Sixth Edition.

Week 3 Questions?

1) What services using mobile phones or other devices would CQU students like to see?

CQU can use a fact finding technique like questionnaires or surveys to answer this question as it involves a large number of people and it would be difficult to obtain an appropriate response without this technique.

Questionnaire and Survey:
A questionnaire, also called a survey is a document containing a number of standard questions that can be sent to a number of individuals.

A typical questionnaire starts with a heading which includes a title, a brief statement of purpose, the name and telephone number of the contact person, the deadline date of completion and how and where to return the form. The heading usually is followed by general instructions that provide clear guidance as to how to answer the questions. A questionnaire should be user friendly and the questions should collect the relevant information which is being surveyed.

2). What services would students find interesting and useful?

A combination of personal observation and research would be beneficial in deriving an answer to this question. Research can include the Internet, IT magazines, and books to obtain background information, technical materials and latest trends. Seeing the students in action would give additional perspective and a better understanding of what is being used and the difficulties with it. Though observation, it might be discovered that the interview or survey results are not accurate.

Personal observations also can provide important advantages like recommendations often are better accepted when they are based on personal observation of actual operations. Research also involves an element of observation where a visit to a physical location is to observe a system in use at another location.

3) What might be the costs and benefits of these innovations?

Document Review would be useful in getting the costs and benefits of these innovations. Document Review helps to understand how the current system is supposed to work. Copies of actual forms and operating documents currently in use should be reviewed. Also blank copies of forms as well as samples of actual completed forms should be well reviewed to find out the costs and benefits of the system in use.

4) What mobile devices do students own? Phones? MP3 players?

Sampling and questionnaires can be used to find what mobile phones or MP3 players are currently used by students. The main objective of a sample is that it ensures that it represents the overall population accurately. Sampling goes hand in hand with the use of questionnaires. Questionnaires would be useful as it can get a response from a large number of people, in this case, university students.

Week 2 Questions?

1- What is an Academic Misconduct?

It is a part or a feature of student misconduct. There are many kinds of academic misconduct but some common ones include Cheating, Plagiarism which means taking ownership or copying somebody else's work, tampering with examination scripts and class records. Other types of academic misconduct that have gained academic attention include unauthorised distribution of examination material, impersonating another student in an exam which means giving an exam for another student and falsigying clinical or laboratory reports (CQU Library).

2- How is academic misconduct identified by CQU?
"That is how the University finds out whether or not a student has done something that might be academic misconduct"

CQU processes a number of cases of academic misconduct with the help of its current system AMMS, which uses a paper based form along with a collection of Excel Spread sheets located at different campuses of CQU. The identification procedure involves:

a) Raising an incident:

This is one of the initial steps, it is when the academic misconduct is Suspected and Recognised.

b) Recording the incident:

This step involves recording the incident along with the suspects details for further action.

c) Assigning the offence level:

CQU has three Offence level's in which an offence can be measured, and the penalty is given on the intensity of the offence.

d) Deciding on the penalty:

Depending on the Level of offence committed marks are deducted, a warning is issued or in other severe cases the student is presented to the CQU exclusion committee.

e) Applying the penalty:

There are two steps in which CQU applies penalties, an official letter is sent to the student finding him guilty of an academic misconduct, and the second ongoing step involves the the assignment of the exam being suspended for the student till the outcome of the charges are decided by the University.

f) Handling appeals:

There are a number of legitimate reasons where a student can contest with the charges, and in order to do such that the student must go through a process, which invloves forms as well.

g)Generating reports:

A report is generated at the end of every CQU academic term, which includes four kinds of information, that is, total number of students convicted of an academic misconduct, the total number of offences in the three levels, and the number of offences for each courses and campuses.

The idea behind, is to use this information to generate reports which are later circulated among Selected or designated people in a paper-based format.

3- Based on your experience, what could CQU do to reduce student academic misconduct?

Educate students as much as possible, Have this informaiton printed in booklets and distribute them to students during enrollments. This information must be on the University website. Students from every faculty of the university should be presented with an academic misconduct questionaire which is compulsory, and should include an appropriate research by comparing policies and procedure of other univeristies. Students should have a forum where they can share their experiences and give thier suggestion on the academic misconduct issues. Have this information available to students in different languages for the assurance of the Univeristy that international students have understood it.