Into the future: Introducing CITRENZ JACIT

Michael Verhaart

It's been a long time in the making, but finally the new CITRENZ JACIT is ready to be launched. With the changing of NACCQ to CITRENZ in 2010 the NACCQ publications JACIT and BACIT have been merged to form a new publication to take us into the future.

I1: Global Intercultural Collaboration: New Educational Directions in Global Collaborations Between Cultures

Tony Clear, Leo Hitchcock, Anders Berglund

This section presents two papers that emerged as a result of the second workshop on Global Intercultural Collaboration 2010 - Future Challenges and Opportunities held at Auckland University of Technology on the 4-5 February 2010...

Refereed Articles

I2: Reasoning about the Value of Cultural Awareness in International Collaboration

Helena Bernáld, Åsa Cajander, Mats Daniels, Cary Laxer

As international collaborations become a part of everyday life, cultural awareness becomes crucial for our ability to work with people from other countries. This paper addresses the value of cultural awareness in general through describing how it was introduced in two computer science courses with a joint collaboration between students from the US and Sweden. The cultural seminars provided to the students are presented, as well as a discussion of the students' reflections and the teachers' experiences.

I3: Team Health, an Assessment Approach to Engage First Year Students in Cross-cultural and Cross-discipline Teams towards More Effective Team-Working

Kathy Egea, Soon Kyeong Kim and Karin Behrens

Specialists who work in a globalised environment, need to work in teams, if they are to be continuously effective. The challenge for IT educators is to design and implement inter-cultural teamwork practices into their curriculum. Investigating this challenge, this case study describes Team Health, an assessment approach designed to skill students to be more effective in team working in cross-cultural and cross-discipline teams.

F1: What's in a Programme?

Brian Cusack, Krassie Petrova

Teaching and research in information technology (IT) is always a reflection of the ever changing landscape of change and continuous innovation. IT programmes also show how content evolves over time, and the emphasis shifts. The current 'digital forensics' buzz-word is not different from the former programming, applications, security, eBusiness and other ubiquitous buzz-words of the past; in fact digital forensics has swept up many of the curriculum remnants of the last decade into a market driven package of law, professionalism and IT technicality.

Refereed Articles

F2: Comparing the Performance of Three Digital Forensic Tools

Brian Cusack, James Liang

Software used for digital forensic investigations requires to be verified against reliability and validity criteria. In this paper, three well known tools are tested against the mandatory features of digital forensic tools published by the National Institute of Standards (NIST). It was found that a variation in performance existed between the tools, with all having measureable areas of non performance. The findings have an impact on the professional use of the tools and illustrate the need for benchmarking and testing of the tools before use.

F3: Evidential Recovery from GPS Devices

Brian Cusack, Mark Simms

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have become more affordable, are now widely used in motor vehicles and in other frequently used applications. As a consequence GPS are increasingly becoming an important source of evidential data for digital forensic investigations. This paper acknowledges there are only disparate documents for the guidance of an investigator when extracting evidence form such systems. The focus of this paper is to provide the technical details of recovering artifacts from four GPS currently available to the New Zealand market. Navman brand GPS are used, following a forensically robust process. The steps of the process are described, results analysed and the associated risks are discussed. In addition, the paper discusses techniques related to the visual presentation of evidence suitable for Google Maps.

F4: Can Compression Reduce Forensic Image Time?

Brian Cusack, Jon Pearse

Creating a forensic copy (image) of a hard disk drive is one of the fundamental tasks a computer forensic analyst must perform. Time is often critical, and there is a need to consider a trade-off between a number of factors to achieve best results. This paper reports the results from an exploratory study into the impact of using disk drive compression on the time needed to image (and verify) a hard disk drive. It was found that time reduction may be achieved once the trade-off of contributing variables was properly estimated. The findings led the investigators to suggest a step-by-step decision making process for analysts when considering disk compression as a means for reducing total image processing time.

A1: Does Embedding an ICT Certification Help Align Tertiary Programs with Industry? A Study of CCNA Workplace Perceptions

Dileep Rajendran

In the last decade there has been an international drive to determine the needs of the ICT industry and skills required by graduates. The intention is to ensure tertiary education is aligned with industry and to suitably prepare students for employment. Among the various initiatives, embedding of industry certification training is one method commonly used to help achieve this.

Technical Reports

T1: Final BRACElet workshop - Auckland University of Technology, September 2010

Tony Clear, Jacqueline Whalley, Phil Robbins, Anne Philpott, Anna Eckerdal, Mikko-Jussi Laakso, and Raymond Lister

This paper reports on the thirteenth and final BRACElet workshop. In this paper we provide a brief retrospective review of the workshops and the findings that have resulted from this multi-institutional multinational investigation into the teaching and learning of novice programmers. Subsequently we report on the work undertaken during the final workshop and then discuss future avenues for research that have evolved as a result of the BRACElet project.

Editorial Board