Tracking students' attendance is an essential part of the educational process as attendance directly affects students' academic performance. Despite the many advances in education technology, attendance checking is still primarily done using manual methods like calling student names or passing around an attendance sheet. These solutions can be time-consuming, distracting and insecure. Technological methods, such as ID card scanning, can also be time-consuming for large classes. In this paper, we propose a Bluetooth-based system that uses the proximity of each student's personal phone to a classroom's Bluetooth beacon throughout a class period to automatically check attendance. We suggest that our solution is simple, inexpensive, requires minimal student and instructor involvement, and increases the security of the attendance-checking process. The novel features of our system, a quick assessment at the end of each lesson and a real-time feedback mechanism for students, provide instructors with richer data than simple attendance metrics. We present the main components of the system of the Automated Attendance-checking System using Bluetooth (AASB) and describe them in detail.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) can be defined as a collection of vehicles and roadside units communicating with each other in order to provide a more efficient and safe driving environment. Vulnerabilities in VANETs may not only endanger drivers' privacy, but also the physical safety of vehicles and their passengers. This paper surveys the recent work in security and privacy in VANETs.

Many of the world's great museums, cultural heritage sites, and other tourist locations offer their visitors some sort of companion mobile app. These apps have features that range from providing basic information to detailed exhibit data, guided tours, interactive displays and augmented reality. With very few exceptions, these apps are purpose-built for each specific venue. We describe a general extensible framework for mobile location-based information systems that provides a complete infrastructure for building apps of this type, with which only content creation is required to make a full-featured, venue-specific mobile app, but further customization is also possible and simple.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [1], computer science professions are among the fastest growing occupations in the U.S., and computer science occupations will add more than half a million new jobs in the next ten years. Simultaneously, universities in the U.S. and worldwide are seeing poor retention rates in computer science, with a major reason being that students often view the early courses in the subject as uninteresting and dull [2]. We have developed a mobile game that provides an engaging way for students to practice the basic syntax of C, C++ and Java. Learning programming language syntax is a tedious process. Practicing by actually programming is, of course, ideal, but we believe that a game which is fun for students to play in their spare time will help them get used to distinguishing correct syntactical constructs quickly. The initial version of the game was evaluated by a small population of first-year computer science students at Norfolk State University. The results showed that students enjoyed the game, and that a modest improvement in the students' abilities to identify correct and incorrect syntax was achieved.

This paper presents the results of a CS0 course based on the Scratch programming language that was designed to improve the retention of at-risk computer science majors. At the authors' university, prior to the introduction of the CS0 course, students who selected the computer science major but entered the university with weak mathematics preparation from high school left the major at a high rate. The Scratch-based CS0 course was developed to keep the students who had a desire to major in computer science engaged in the department, as well as prepare them for success in future computer science courses. This paper discusses the formal study that was conducted on the CS0 course offerings in Fall 2009 and Fall 2010, which reached about 120 students total, and over 60 in the target group of freshman CS majors with low mathematics placement scores. The study examined the course's effectiveness at improving the retention, performance and attitudes of these at-risk majors.

This workshop will provide an overview of a Scratch-based introductory programming course developed for an NSF CCLI study. Attendees will receive instruction on using the Scratch programming environment and on course curriculum materials that can be used to teach an introductory programming course with Scratch. This workshop will be suitable for educators interested in using Scratch at the high school or freshman level, for CS majors or for non-majors, for an entire programming course or for modules in another course. Attendees will be given access to all the developed course materials: labs, homework exercises, presentation slides, and exam questions. Attendees should bring their laptops with the latest version of Scratch installed. The presenters are the principal investigators of an NSF CCLI grant (DUE-08376950) entitled, "A Scratch-based CS0 Course for At-Risk Students".

Although computer science enrollment has increased in the freshman and sophomore levels over the past few years, computer science departments are still faced with retention issues, particularly if some of their majors have weak mathematics backgrounds and are placed directly in CS1. In this paper, a new CS0 course using Scratch is described, along with a study to determine the effectiveness of the CS0 course at improving the retention, performance and attitudes of at-risk majors. Initial assessments indicate that students who are programming using Scratch have a high degree of perceived self-efficacy with respect to their programming abilities. Furthermore, the midterm performance of the students who took the new CS0 course in Fall 2009 and are currently enrolled in CS1 exceeds that of students in previous years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that approximately 175,100 software engineering jobs will be created between 2008 and 2018. In order to fill these positions, new computer scientists, who enjoy and are competent in the art of programming and software design, must be trained. Computer science departments must look for novel approaches to attract non-traditional students, i.e. women and minorities, to the major, in order to fill the positions predicted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, although computer science enrollment has increased in the freshman and sophomore levels over the past few years, computer science departments are still faced with identifying new approaches to teaching programming that will retain students, particularly if some of them have weak mathematics backgrounds and are placed directly in CS1. In this paper, a study to determine the effectiveness of a CS0 course using Scratch for improving the retention, the performance and the attitudes of at-risk majors is discussed. Initial assessments associated with the study indicate that students of the target group who program using Scratch have a high degree of perceived self-efficacy with respect to their programming abilities. Furthermore, results to date indicate that the originally at-risk students in the study went on to successfully complete CS1 with a passing rate of 74% compared to a 39% passing rate in CS1 by the students who had sufficiently high mathematics scores upon entry into the university.

This paper focuses on the design and implementation of an educational game for deployment on the Xbox 360 commercial game console. Video games can be extremely powerful and effective learning tools when deployed with methodical precision. Currently, no learning tools are available for commercial consoles that focus on teaching core concepts in Engineering. This work presents an overall design for an educational adventure game (BINX) to address Number Systems and their arithmetic operations in Digital Logic Design; a core course is Electrical and Computer Engineering programs. The paper also presents, in detail, the design and implementation of the first sublevel of the game.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks are deployed as an enhancement to terrestrial wireless networks in order to provide broadband services to users regardless of their location. In addition to global coverage, these satellite systems support communications with hand-held devices and offer low cost-per-minute access cost, making them promising platforms for personal communication services (PCS). LEO satellites are expected to support multimedia traffic and to provide their users with some form of quality of service (QoS) guarantees. However, the limited bandwidth of the satellite channel, satellite rotation around the Earth and mobility of end-users makes QoS provisioning and mobility management a challenging task. One important mobility problem is the intra-satellite handoff management. While global positioning systems (GPS)-enabled devices will become ubiquitous in the future and can help solve a major portion of the problem, at present the use of GPS for low-cost cellular networks is unsuitable. RADAR—refined admission detecting absence region—a novel call admission control and handoff management scheme for LEO satellite networks is proposed in this chapter. A key ingredient in this scheme is a companion predictive bandwidth allocation strategy that exploits the topology of the network and contributes to maintaining high bandwidth utilization. Our bandwidth allocation scheme is specifically tailored to meet the QoS needs of multimedia connections. The performance of RADAR is compared to that of three recent schemes proposed in the literature. Simulation results show that our scheme offers low call dropping probability, providing for reliable handoff of on-going calls, and good call blocking probability for new call requests, while ensuring high bandwidth utilization.

This paper proposes a novel chaos reducing information dissemination approach for spatio-temporal traffic information related to first responders and evacuation scenarios using Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). In our approach, we provide an emergency vehicle path clearing technique. Therefore, traffic confusion and chaos is lowered on evacuation and emergency vehicle routes. Simulation results show that our approach works efficiently without fully relying on any message relaying infrastructure.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks are deployed as an enhancement to terrestrial wireless networks in order to provide broadband services to users regardless of their location. In addition to ensuring global coverage, LEO satellite systems support communications with hand-held devices and offer low cost access, making them promising platforms for military communications and for Personal Communication Services (PCS). The main contribution of this work is to propose 2WIN (Two Windows), an efficient call admission control scheme for multimedia LEO satellite networks. Instead of maintaining priority queues and making resource reservations in a number of cells that the user is likely to visit, 2WIN relies on a lightweight call admission mechanism that uses a pair of back-to-back virtual windows. The performance of 2WIN is compared with three related schemes. Simulation results show that our new scheme offers excellent quality of service (QoS) for multimedia traffic, featuring a very low call dropping probability, providing for reliable handoff of on-going calls, as well as a low call blocking probability for new call requests, while still ensuring high bandwidth utilization.

This paper proposes an efficient chaos-reducing information dissemination approach for spatiotemporal traffic information related to first responders and planned evacuation scenarios using vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). VANETs have recently been proposed as one of the promising ad-hoc networking techniques that can be used to provide a safe and enjoyable driving experience. In our approach, we provide an emergency vehicle path clearing technique, and real-time resource (e.g. shelter) availability information. Therefore, traffic confusion and chaos is lowered on evacuation and emergency vehicle routes. Simulation results show that our approach works efficiently without fully relying on any message relaying infrastructure.

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are deployed as an enhancement to terrestrial wireless networks in order to provide broadband services to users regardless of their location. In addition to ensuring global coverage, LEO satellite systems support communications with hand-held devices and offer low-cost access, making them promising platforms for military communications and for personal communication services (PCS). The main contribution of this work is to propose RADAR - refined admission detecting absence region - a novel call admission control and handoff management scheme for multimedia LEO satellite networks. A key ingredient in our scheme is a companion predictive bandwidth allocation strategy that exploits the topology of the network and contributes to maintaining high bandwidth utilization. The performance of RADAR is compared to that of three recent schemes proposed in the literature. Simulation results show that our scheme offers a very low call dropping probability, providing for reliable handoff of on-going calls, as well as a low call blocking probability for new call requests, while still ensuring high bandwidth utilization.

We present the idea of using a separate network that processes and enforces security in a data network. We briefly discuss various components of such a network, called common data security network (CDSN). We use the example of the IEEE 802.11i to determine one of the link level metrics of the proposed network, the fractional overhead for IEEE 802.1X and temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP).