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1. Enhancing Computing Curricular Outcomes and Student Accomplishments Through Collegiate Competitions

   Anand, Vijay ; Bolton, Natalie A. ; Calyam, Prasad ; Chadha, Rohit ; Raj, Rajendra K. ; Mishra, Sumita ( December 2023 , Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Global Computing Education Vol 1 (CompEd 2023))

   Games and competitions enhance student engagement and help improve hands-on learning of computing concepts. Focusing on targeted goals, competitions provide a sense of community and accomplishment among students, fostering peer-learning opportunities. Despite these benefits of motivating and enhancing student learning, the impact of competitions on curricular learning outcomes has not been sufficiently studied. For institutional or program accreditation, understanding the extent to which students achieve course or program learning outcomes is essential, and helps in establishing continuous improvement processes for the program curriculum. Utilizing the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), a curricular assessment was conducted for an undergraduate cybersecurity program at a US institution. This archetypal competition was selected as it provides an effective platform for broader program learning outcomes, as students need to: (1) function in a team and communicate effectively (teamwork and communication skills); (2) articulate technical information to non-technical audiences (communication skills); (3) apply excellent technical and non-technical knowledge (design and analysis skills applied to problem-solving); and (4) function well under adversity (real-world problem-solving skills). Using data for both students who competed and who did not, student progress was tracked over five years. Preliminary analysis showed that these competitions made marginally-interested students become deeply engaged with the curriculum; broadened participation among women who became vital to team success by showcasing their technical and management skills; and pushed students to become self-driven, improving their academic performance and career placements. This experience report also reflects on what was learned and outlines the next steps for this work. 

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2. Virtual Machine Introspection for Anomaly-Based Keylogger Detection

   https://doi.org/10.1109/HPSR48589.2020.9098980  

   Huseynov, H. ; Kouraiy, H. ; Saadawi, T. ; Igbe, O. ( May 2020 , IEEE High Performance Switching and Routing)

   Software Keyloggers are dominant class of malicious applications that surreptitiously logs all the user activity to gather confidential information. Among many other types of keyloggers, API-based keyloggers can pretend as unprivileged program running in a user-space to eavesdrop and record all the keystrokes typed by the user. In a Linux environment, defending against these types of malware means defending the kernel against being compromised and it is still an open and difficult problem. Considering how recent trend of edge computing extends cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) to the edge of the network, a new types of intrusiondetection system (IDS) has been used to mitigate cybersecurity threats in edge computing. Proposed work aims to provide secure environment by constantly checking virtual machines for the presence of keyloggers using cutting edge artificial immune system (AIS) based technology. The algorithms that exist in the field of AIS exploit the immune system’s characteristics of learning and memory to solve diverse problems. We further present our approach by employing an architecture where host OS and a virtual machine (VM) layer actively collaborate to guarantee kernel integrity. This collaborative approach allows us to introspect VM by tracking events (interrupts, system calls, memory writes, network activities, etc.) and to detect anomalies by employing negative selection algorithm (NSA). 

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3. An open-source platform for sub-$$\textrm{g}$$, sub-$$\upmu$$A data loggers

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40317-023-00327-0  

   Brown, Geoffrey M. ; Chen, Jiawei ; Fudickar, Adam ; Jahn, Alex E. ( May 2023 , Animal Biotelemetry)

   Rapid improvements in inexpensive, low-power, movement and environmental sensors have sparked a revolution in animal behavior research by enabling the creation of data loggers (henceforth, tags) that can capture fine-grained behavioral data over many months. Nevertheless, development of tags that are suitable for use with small species, for example, birds under 25 g, remains challenging because of the extreme mass (under 1$$\textrm{g}$$$\text{g}$) and power (average current under 1$$\upmu$$$\mu$A) constraints. These constraints dictate that a tag should carry exactly the sensors required for a given experiment and the data collection protocol should be specialized to the experiment. Furthermore, it can be extremely challenging to design hardware and software to achieve the energy efficiency required for long tag life.

   We present an activity monitor, BitTag, that can continuously collect activity data for 4–12 months at 0.5–0.8$$\textrm{g}$$$\text{g}$, depending upon battery choice, and which has been used to collect more than 500,000 h of data in a variety of experiments. The BitTag architecture provides a general platform to support the development and deployment of custom sub-$$\textrm{g}$$$\text{g}$tags. This platform consists of a flexible tag architecture, software for both tags and host computers, and hardware to provide the host/tag interface necessary for preparing tags for “flight” and for accessing tag data “post-flight”. We demonstrate how the BitTag platform can be extended to quickly develop novel tags with other sensors while satisfying the 1g/1$$\upmu$$$\mu$A mass and power requirements through the design of a novel barometric pressure sensing tag that can collect pressure and temperature data every 60$$\textrm{s}$$$\text{s}$for a year with mass under 0.6$$\textrm{g}$$$\text{g}$.

    

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4. Using Virtual Reality Cleanroom Simulation in a Mixed Nanoelectronics Classroom

   Letavish, Sean ; Meliksetyan, Ani ; Ravel, Victoria ; Ok, Hurriyet. A. ; Milman, Natalie B. ; Adam, Gina C. ( June 2023 , 2023 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Given the strategic importance of the semiconductor manufacturing sector and the CHIPS Act impact on microelectronics, it is more imperative than ever to train the next generation of scientists and engineers in the field. However, this is a challenging feat since nanofabrication education uses hands-on cleanroom facilities. Since cleanrooms are expensive, have access constraints due to safety concerns, and offer limited instructional space, class sizes and outreach events are limited. To complement instruction in nanotechnology education, there is some open- or educational-access software, which is computer-based and focuses only on training for individual equipment, not on the typical workflow for device fabrication. The objective of this work was to develop an accessible virtual reality ecosystem that provides an immersive education and outreach on device nanofabrication that is user-friendly for a broad range of audiences. At the George Washington University (GWU), a virtual reality cleanroom prototype has been developed. It consists of a 45-minute gameplay module that covers the process flow for the fabrication of micro-scale resistors, from sample preparation to electrical characterization. We also performed a mixed methods study to investigate how 5 students in a nanoelectronics course utilized this virtual reality cleanroom prototype and what changes they recommend to improve its user interface and learner experience. The study population for this work-in-progress consisted of students enrolled in a nanoelectronics course at GWU during the 2022-2023 school year. Students taking this course can be undergraduate (junior or senior) or graduate (masters or PhD). The research questions for this study were 1) what is the user experience with the virtual reality cleanroom prototype, 2) what challenges, if any, did students experience, and 3) what changes did students recommend to improve the virtual reality cleanroom prototype learner experience? Preliminary results indicate that the students found the virtual reality cleanroom simulator helpful in repeatedly exploring the cleanroom space and the nanofabrication process flow in a safe way, thus developing more confidence in utilizing the actual cleanroom facility. The results of this study will provide insight on the design of future modules with more complicated levels and device process flows. Moreover, the study could inform the development of other virtual reality simulators for other lab activities. The improved usability of the proposed software could provide students in large classes or attending online programs in electrical and computer engineering, as well as K-12 students participating in nanotechnology-related outreach events, the opportunity to conduct realistic process workflows, learn first-hand about nanofabrication, and practice using a nanofabrication lab via trial and error in a safe virtual environment. 

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5. Mixed Reality Multimedia Learning to Facilitate Learning Outcomes from Project Based Learning

   https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784482865.017  

   Patil, Karan R. ; Ayer, Steven K. ; Wu, Wei ; London, Jeremi ( January 2020 , Construction Research Congress 2020: Computer Applications)

   Tang, Pingbo ; Grau, David ; Asmar, Mounir E. (Ed.)

   Effective construction engineering and management education requires hands-on experiences that have not traditionally been offered in classroom settings. Physical building competitions like Solar Decathlon are valuable for providing experiential learning opportunities that may support tacit and explicit knowledge development among students, but they are often not available to all students due to funding and resource limitations. Less resource intensive teaching strategies, such as project based learning, can mimic the benefit of physical experiences by providing context to learning content. This paper reviews project based learning literature to identify trends in reported learning gains from the adoption of this strategy. Additionally, emerging technologies offer the ability to create low cost, immersive multimedia environments that may be able to support the types of learning targeted by physical design and construction experiences. Literature on multimedia learning theory is explored to identify opportunities for multimedia applications to facilitate learnings derived by physical educational contexts, but with the use of increasingly affordable multimedia strategies. This paper resulted in identifying six learning gains that have a theoretical potential to be facilitated using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies. The theoretical potential was deduced based on prior research on teaching strategies that provide real-world context to learning content. The authors of this paper propose using the identified learning gains as targets to specifically design implementation studies to verify this potential. The learning gains identified in the results section can be targeted and measured in future research when empirically validating the use of immersive technologies for construction education. The contribution of this work is in synthesizing the learning gains that future researchers should target based on evidence from prior research in related learning contexts. 

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