ICT Domain Research Articles

Competency and Barriers in Using ICT among Public School Teachers in Tagoloan District

Technology integration in education transforms teaching and learning by improving efficiency, accessibility, and student participation in the classroom. This study examines the teachers' profile, competency, and barriers that influence the use of ICT between public school teachers in Tagoloan East and West Districts during the School Year 2023–2024. Specifically, the study sought to determine the respondents’ level of competency in the ICT domain and the barriers to using ICT. This study involved two hundred thirty-six (236) respondents from the public elementary and secondary schools of Tagoloan District using the Slovins formula. It used the descriptive research design and an adapted and modified survey questionnaire to collect data. The descriptive correlational method was used to evaluate the samples with statistical analysis including standard deviation, frequency, percentage, mean scores, and Pearson r correlation. The findings showed that teachers' ICT ability is significantly influenced by age, teaching experience, and attitude, and there is a notable relationship between ICT skills and barriers related to manpower, policy, and facilities. Further, enhancing teachers' ICT competence through advanced technology training and effective integration methods aims to provide proficient educational experiences for 21st-century learners and improve teaching professionalism and efficacy. It is concluded that teachers face challenges in implementing ICT policies, including limited resources, reluctance to change, technological issues, and inadequate training. Factors like age, experience, and attitude influence these barriers. Additionally, it is recommended that schools should train proficient teachers as ICT experts to assist in incorporating technology into classroom teaching. This expert should provide ongoing support and training through mentoring programs. Teachers with limited technology experience are encouraged to improve their ICT integration skills, ensuring they can adapt to current trends and provide advanced educational experiences in the 21st century.

Development and validation of coreLang: A threat modeling language for the ICT domain

ICT infrastructures are getting increasingly complex, and defending them against cyber attacks is cumbersome. As cyber threats continue to increase and expert resources are limited, organizations must find more efficient ways to evaluate their resilience and take proactive measures. Threat modeling is an excellent method of assessing the resilience of ICT systems, for example, by building Attack Graphs that illustrate an adversary’s attack vectors. Previously, the Meta Attack Language (MAL) was proposed, which serves as a framework to develop Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) and generate Attack Graphs for modeled infrastructures. coreLang is a MAL-based threat modeling language that utilizes Attack Graphs to enable attack simulations and security assessments. In this work, we present the first release version of coreLang in which MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques are mapped onto to serve as a validation and identify strengths and weaknesses to benefit the development cycle. Our validation showed that coreLang does cover 46% of all the techniques included in the matrix, while if we additionally exclude the tactics that are intrinsically not covered by coreLang and MAL, the coverage percentage increases to 64%.

THE IMPACT OF ICT EDUCATION ON GDP EVOLUTION AT LOCAL LEVEL. A ROMANIAN CASE STUDY

Purpose – This article focusses on the impact generated on GDP growth by the number of graduates in the ICT domain of Romanian counties in the period 2014–2020. Research methodology – We have collected the number of ICT graduates, the GDP per inhabitant in EUR per Romanian county, the number of ICT employees, the number of information service activities employees from the National Institute of Statistics (Romania) and Eurostat. Additionally, we consolidate the correlation matrix and regression analysis for previous statistics indicators. Findings – We have revealed a strong correlation (85,77%) between the number of ICT graduates and the GDP per inhabitant in EUR per Romanian county, and very strong correlations between the number of ICT graduates and the number of ICT employees (94,80%) and the number of employees of information service activities (97,38%). Research limitations – The data set from the National Institute of Statistics (Romania) does not contain entries for every county, due to its statistical methodology, and other socioeconomic phenomena which contribute to the development of the ICT field were just enumerated, such as natality, immigration, and emigration. Practical implications – The study revealed that investment in ICT education (number of graduates) contributes to the local prosperity of communities, counties, and, in general, at the national level as GDP growth. Romanian government can utilize the outcomes of this paper to engage additional resources, funds from Ministry of Education, to develop a long-lived learning culture of ICT skills for the entire population. Originality/Value – The article methodologically highlights the most important ICT hubs in Romania, which are correlated with the existence of an ICT educational infrastructure (high schools and universities) and the measure of impact on GDP growth for the number of highly skilled graduates in the ICT domain. The selected national and European indicators contributed to the novelty of this study.

EMERGENCIES IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICAL DISPATCHING IN POLAND. CHALLENGES IN THE COOPERATION OF EMERGENCY MEDICAL TEAMS WITH MEDICAL DISPATCHERS

The article presents the organization of The State Emergency Medical System in Poland in terms of the operation of the medical dispensaries. Particular attention was paid to the cooperation of medical dispatch centers with Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs) in the realities and circumstances of unexpected events. Areas requiring increased attention during an emergency involving medical dispensary systems have been highlighted. Incidents involving, in particular, various types of unavailability of ICT systems are included. These situations make it necessary to change the daily way of working. Due to the differences in professional practice that apply to those who perform their tasks within the framework of medical rescue teams and medical dispatchers, such circumstances may cause a discrepancy in the understanding of the above-mentioned issue. Given the current tense geopolitical situation and the military conflict beyond Poland's eastern border, special attention should be paid to the possibility of destabilizing the ICT domain in terms of the country's internal security systems. Active local exercises, but also those covering larger areas of the country, will allow to verify the current ways of doing things, the availability of emergency kits and alternative solutions. Above all, however, this will be the only opportunity to learn from non-harmful contingencies that will enable the smooth operation of Poland's prehospital healthcare system during the challenges ahead.

Empirical evaluation of a threat modeling language as a cybersecurity assessment tool

The complexity of ICT infrastructures is continuously increasing, presenting a formidable challenge in safeguarding them against cyber attacks. In light of escalating cyber threats and limited availability of expert resources, organizations must explore more efficient approaches to assess their resilience and undertake proactive measures. Threat modeling is an effective approach for assessing the cyber resilience of ICT systems. One method is to utilize Attack Graphs, which visually represent the steps taken by adversaries during an attack. Previously, MAL (the Meta Attack Language) was proposed, which serves as a framework for developing Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and generating Attack Graphs for modeled infrastructures. coreLang is a MAL-based threat modeling language that utilizes such Attack Graphs to enable attack simulations and security assessments for the generic ICT domain. Developing domain-specific languages for threat modeling and attack simulations provides a powerful approach for conducting security assessments of infrastructures. However, ensuring the correctness of these modeling languages raises a separate research question. In this study we conduct an empirical experiment aiming to falsify such a domain-specific threat modeling language. The potential inability to falsify the language through our empirical testing would lead to its corroboration, strengthening our belief in its validity within the parameters of our study. The outcomes of this approach indicated that, on average, the assessments generated by attack simulations outperformed those of human experts. Additionally, both human experts and simulations exhibited significantly superior performance compared to random guessers in their assessments. While specific human experts occasionally achieved better assessments for particular questions in the experiments, the efficiency of simulation-generated assessments surpasses that of human domain experts.

DAGA: Detecting Attacks to In-Vehicle Networks via N-Gram Analysis

Recent research showcased several cyber-attacks against unmodified licensed vehicles, demonstrating the vulnerability of their internal networks. Many solutions have already been proposed by industry and academia, aiming to detect and prevent cyber-attacks targeting in-vehicle networks. The majority of these proposals borrow security algorithms and techniques from the classical ICT domain, and in many cases they do not consider the inherent limitations of legacy automotive protocols and resource-constrained microcontrollers. This paper proposes <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DAGA</b> , an anomaly detection algorithm for in-vehicle networks exploiting <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n-$</tex-math></inline-formula> gram analysis. DAGA only uses sequences of CAN message IDs for the definition of the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n-$</tex-math></inline-formula> grams used in the detection process, without requiring the content of the payload or other CAN message fields. The DAGA framework allows the creation of detection models characterized by different memory footprints, allowing their deployment on microcontrollers with different hardware constraints. Experimental results based on three prototype implementations of DAGA showcase the trade off between hardware requirements and detection performance. DAGA outperforms the state-of-the-art detectors on the most performing microcontrollers, and can execute with lower performance on simple microcontrollers that cannot support the vast majority of IDS approaches proposed in literature. As additional contributions, we publicly release the full dataset and our reference DAGA implementations.

Distribution and Allocation of Network Resources Based on Predictive Analyses of Time-Series Telecommunications Data

With the fast development of different communication technologies, applications, and services, the adoption of advanced sensory and computing solutions, such as the various Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile computing solutions, is continuously growing. The massive adoption of mobile computing and IoT sensory devices encouraged the continuous growth of generated network traffic. Therefore, the selection of adequate solutions for efficient data processing became necessary. Despite numerous advantages arising from effective data processing, operators and enterprises working within the ICT domain have only limited amounts of available networking resources to store, process, and use valuable information extracted from large quantities of gathered data. In this paper, an optimal planning process and prediction of usage of network resources is examined. It takes into consideration the results of predictive modeling processes based on available sets of time series telecommunications data. The given forecasts enable effective selection of network architectures, as well as the distribution and allocation of network resources considering the cloud, edge, and fog networking concepts.

Performic Acid Disinfection of Municipal Secondary Effluent Wastewater: Inactivation of Murine Norovirus, Fecal Coliforms, and Enterococci.

Performic acid (PFA) is an emerging disinfectant to inactivate bacterial and viral microorganisms in wastewater. In this study, the inactivation kinetics of murine norovirus (MNV) by PFA, in phosphate buffer and municipal secondary effluent wastewater, are reported for the first time. PFA decay followed first-order kinetics and the inactivation of MNV was governed by the exposure of microorganisms to PFA, i.e., the integral of the PFA concentration over time (integral CT or ICT). The extension of the Chick-Watson model, in the ICT domain, described well the reduction of MNV by PFA, with determined ICT-based inactivation rate constants, kd, of 1.024 ± 0.038 L/(mg·min) and 0.482 ± 0.022 L/(mg·min) in phosphate buffer and wastewater, respectively, at pH 7.2. Furthermore, the simultaneous PFA inactivation of MNV and fecal indicators indigenously present in wastewater such as fecal coliforms and enterococci showed that 1-log reduction could be achieved with ICT of 2, 1.5, and 3.5 mg·min/L, respectively. When compared with the most commonly used peracid disinfectant of municipal wastewater, peracetic acid (PAA), the ICT requirements determined using the fitted ICT-based kinetic models were ∼20 times higher for PAA than PFA, indicating a much stronger inactivation power of the PFA molecule.

Applications of Game Theory in Project Management: A Structured Review and Analysis

This paper provides a structured literature review and analysis of using game theory to model project management scenarios. We select and review thirty-two papers from Scopus, present a complex three-dimensional classification of the selected papers, and analyse the resultant citation network. According to the industry-based classification, the surveyed literature can be classified in terms of construction industry, ICT industry or unspecified industry. Based on the types of players, the literature can be classified into papers that use government-contractor games, contractor–contractor games, contractor-subcontractor games, subcontractor–subcontractor games or games involving other types of players. Based on the type of games used, papers using normal-form non-cooperative games, normal-form cooperative games, extensive-form non-cooperative games or extensive-form cooperative games are present. Also, we show that each of the above classifications plays a role in influencing which papers are likely to cite a particular paper, though the strongest influence is exerted by the type-of-game classification. Overall, the citation network in this field is sparse, implying that the awareness of authors in this field about studies by other academics is suboptimal. Our review suggests that game theory is a very useful tool for modelling project management scenarios, and that more work needs to be done focusing on project management in ICT domain, as well as by using extensive-form cooperative games where relevant.

Analysis of MSEs in ICT Domain from Bucharest – Ilfov County by Using Nonaka – Takeuchi Model

Analysis of MSEs in ICT Domain from Bucharest – Ilfov County by Using Nonaka – Takeuchi Model

Predicting Teachers� ICT Competence in a Philippine University Using J48 Algorithm

Objectives: The advent of information technology causes a significant impact on pedagogy and using ICT technologies in school-related activities. With this argument, determining the teacher’s ICT competence is expected to yield a better or positive impact on the learners and the performance of the teachers itself, however, no model was developed in predicting teachers ICT competence. In line with this, it is empirical to study and develop a model that will help the university in predicting teacher’s ICT competence. Methods: Data mining approach utilizing J48 algorithm was applied in this paper to create a model suitable for the actual teachers’ characteristics in the University. Moreover, Cross-validation technique was used to validate the dataset to have an optimum and acceptable model and generating the Receiving Operating Characteristics Curve (ROC) Area under ROC Curve technique. Findings: Decision tree model and decision rule for classification were created. Additionally, there were 92.78% correctly classified with an AUC weighted mean of 92.4%. Also, the model has very high acceptability and accuracy in predicting Teacher’s ICT Competence. However, it also revealed that many teachers still need more exposure in utilizing ICT technologies in pedagogy and any school-related activities. Application/Improvements: The result of this study can be a basis for developing software that will automatically categorize or classify the Teacher’s ICT competence. For more improvement of this paper and the model, it is suggested to add additional parameters to have more factors involved in predicting Teacher’s ICT competence. Keywords: Blended Learning, Decision Tree, ICT Competency, ICT Domain, ICT Pedagogy, J48 Algorithm, Machine Learning

EXPLORING ENHANCEMENTS TO THE AGILE APPROACH FOR MID-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN THE SERVICES SECTOR

Companies need to thrive in a dynamic environment, responding to it in an agile way. Within a company’s ICT domain, a key to achieving agility is to use agile software development. Experience, together with a literature review, has shown that the agile software development family of methods does not naturally fit into the context of medium to large enterprises. This article focuses on the challenges associated with agile software development. The main contribution of the article is to affirm that a class-of-problems exists – i.e., that many practitioners face challenges in implementing existing agile software development approaches successfully in medium to large enterprises. We also gather data via multiple interviews to show that the class-of-problems exists in a real-world enterprise that currently applies agile software development in medium-sized governmental bodies.

Gamification and the Quality of Informal Post-Experiential Learning

As corporate learning moves out of the classroom into the hands of learners, the responsibilities of those who provide guidance in this process are changing. The overall prevalence of learning tools creates a need for competent learning leaders who make decisions about the development of the workforce. With special focus on the least used gamified learning tool, the aim of the study was to investigate the enablement of gamified learning tools determined by certain attributes of this research. A questionnaire survey had been conducted on a selected sample of 100 high-level learning leaders from 28 countries to examine if there are significant correlations between the usage of gamified learning tools and corporate learning leaders’ minds, their competences and the organizational culture profiles of companies. Results had been analysed with the SPSS statistical software package and indicated that relationships between these variables cannot be categorically proven, so no predictions can be made about the future of gamified learning based on these attributes. It is the highest time to conduct an extensive research to examine relationships between the quality of informal learning and learning tools in the ICT domain.

Rehabilitation after Stroke using Immersive User Interfaces in 3D Virtual and Augmented Gaming Environments

Stroke is one of most common diseases of our modern societies with high socio-economic impact. Hence, rehabilitation approach involving patients in their rehabilitation process while lowering costly involvement of specialised human personnel is needed. This article describes a novel approach, offering an integrated rehabilitation training for stroke patients using a serious gaming approach based on a Unity3D virtual reality engine combined with a range of advanced technologies and immersive user interfaces. It puts patients and caretakers in control of the rehabilitation protocols, while leading physicians are enabled to supervise the progress of the rehabilitation via Personal Health Record. Possibility to perform training in a familiar home environment directly improves the effectiveness of the rehabilitation. The work presented herein has been conducted within the "StrokeBack" project co-funded by the European Commission under the Framework 7 Program in the ICT domain.

Cognitive dissonance and social influence effects on preference judgments: An eye tracking based system for their automatic assessment

Researchers have investigated the social influence on the human decision making process. Social pressure and individual cognitive dynamics are complex variables in decision making that can give very useful insight in predicting human behavior. This is also useful in exploiting important factors that can be embedded in ICTs in order to equip them with human cognitive-inspired features. By tracking eye movements and measuring reaction times, we investigated the decision making process made when asked to rate two photos against each other. We manipulate the social information available to participants: no information (blind), information about responses of other participants (others), and information about responses of the community of friends of the participants. In particular the investigation of the social pressure effects (e.g., In–Out group bias and cognitive dissonance effects) on the human decision making represents an inspiring perspective of research for several domains. In this paper we demonstrate how this approach allows us to investigate both, the decision making process at individual level, and the role played by the social dimension. The possibility to create a formal model of these processes can give very useful clues and inputs to the ICT domain. On one hand, the computational modeling approach could allow us to predict the behavior of human people in order to optimize the interaction between users and ICTs. On the other hand, this new understanding can allow computer scientist equip technological systems with some interesting features that characterized the human cognitive system towards the Self-Awareness in autonomic centric systems.

Technological pervasiveness and variety of innovators in Green ICT: A patent-based analysis

Many eco-innovations have been linked to technical change in the ICT domain. Leveraging the distinctive features of general purpose technologies, ICT have the potential to steer green growth and to help decouple this growth from ecological damage. The paper aims to shed light on innovation dynamics in this emerging sector by investigating the patterns of innovation in the green ICT domains using granted EPO patent data from 1986 to 2006. By means of a network analysis, it identifies existing green ICT domains and examines the characteristics of innovative activity in these domains, focusing in particular on growth and technological pervasiveness, as well as on the variety of innovators. Results indicate that the innovative activity in green ICT domains is characterised by high growth and high levels of technological pervasiveness, considerable entry of new innovators and a variety of actors – with a prevalence of large ICT firms and universities. However, the analysis highlights the existence of three different clusters – emerging fields, established fields and mature fields – that are defined by different structures of innovative activities and by different technological opportunities.

Ontology-based annotation and retrieval of services in the cloud

Cloud computing is a technological paradigm that permits computing services to be offered over the Internet. This new service model is closely related to previous well-known distributed computing initiatives such as Web services and grid computing. In the current socio-economic climate, the affordability of cloud computing has made it one of the most popular recent innovations. This has led to the availability of more and more cloud services, as a consequence of which it is becoming increasingly difficult for service consumers to find and access those cloud services that fulfil their requirements. In this paper, we present a semantically-enhanced platform that will assist in the process of discovering the cloud services that best match user needs. This fully-fledged system encompasses two basic functions: the creation of a repository with the semantic description of cloud services and the search for services that accomplish the required expectations. The cloud service’s semantic repository is generated by means of an automatic tool that first annotates the cloud service descriptions with semantic content and then creates a semantic vector for each service. The comprehensive evaluation of the tool in the ICT domain has led to very promising results that outperform state-of-the-art solutions in similarly broad domains.

Creating a semantically-enhanced cloud services environment through ontology evolution

Currently, the availability of Web resources has grown enormously to the point that whatever a user needs at a given moment can potentially be found on the Internet. These resources are not limited to data items anymore, functionality delivered through some sort of service architectural model is also offered on the Internet. In the last few years, cloud computing has emerged as one of the most popular computing models to provide services over the Internet. However, as the number of available cloud services increases, the problem of service discovery and selection arises. Experience indicates that semantic technologies can provide the basis for enhanced and more precise search processes. In this paper, we present a platform that makes use of semantic technologies and techniques to facilitate the discovery of cloud resources meeting the users’ needs. We propose an architecture that puts together semantic annotation techniques, ontology evolution, term extraction and indexing resources to semantically annotate cloud services, and a semantic search engine that leverages the semantic description of the cloud resources to find them from keyword-based searches. A comprehensive evaluation of the tool in the ICT domain has produced very promising results and is also presented in this article.

A Semantic based Platform for Research and Development Projects Management in the ICT Domain

A Semantic based Platform for Research and Development Projects Management in the ICT Domain

Some reflections on the high expectations as formulated in the Internet Bubble era

Since the breakthrough of the Internet to the broader public in the 1990s, expectations of the converging information technology, telecommunication and media industries and technologies as a catalyst for economic growth and social welfare have been high. Futures scientists were involved in predicting the future of these technologies during the Internet bubble. In this paper, we use a meta-analysis approach to examine how well futures studies have been able to describe future reality. We limit our studies to futures research in the ICT and Internet domain that were published between 1995 and 2000. Because the number of relevant studies can hardly be called impressive, we selected a number of available futures studies that were conducted by official government bodies and individual companies, based on various approaches, ranging from technology forecasts [1] to highly creative visions [2], and from predictions [2] to essays [4]. These studies were carried out by Dutch as well as by international organizations. Based on a framework we developed for the analysis of business models, we wanted to see whether technological drivers, regulatory/policy issues and market development as well as competitive behavior, on the input side, and the way value for customers and providers is provided, on the output side, were discussed. Our analysis made it clear that, looking back with what we know now about business models, futures studies and recently developed tools like road mapping, developments in futures studies have made tremendous progress since the Internet Bubble. However, here is still room for more rigor when it comes to methodology and reporting. More recently, there has been a promising integration of scenario analysis and business model approaches that opens new avenues for futures studies.