Colleges and universities are running out of closet space. With the amount of data predicted to grow 800 percent by 2016, higher education faces a desperate race to develop strategies to store and manage the tidal wave of information. Unfortunately, many IT departments, particularly those in the public sector, have flatlining budgets--and no money…

One of the areas where demand has remained strong for MIS students is in the area of database management. Since the early days, this topic has been a mainstay in the MIS curriculum. Students of database management today typically learn about relational databases, SQL, normalization, and how to design and implement various kinds of database…

It is proposed to establish an Integrated Distance Education System in India by designing modern technology based information communication network, connecting all its ODL (Open and Distance Learning) institutions to the headquarters of the ODL system in India. The principle roles to be performed by such a system have been discussed; according to…

Identifying academic misdemeanours and actual applied effort in student assessments involving practical work can be problematic. For instance, it can be difficult to assess the actual effort that a student applied, the sequence and method applied, and whether there was any form of collusion or collaboration. In this paper we propose a system of…

Managing resource usage and data delivery with virtualization devices is a staple of many of today's data infrastructures. By breaking the traditional direct physical access and inserting an abstraction layer, what one sees is what he/she gets, but the mechanics of delivery may be quite different. The reason for the increase in virtualization…

A micromanufacturing lab-on-a-chip project with a nanotechnology component was introduced as an alternate laboratory in the required first-year engineering curriculum at The Ohio State University. Nanotechnology is introduced in related reading and laboratory tours as well as laboratory activities including a quarter-length design, build, and test…

"I saved my presentation in my personal drive on the server last night, but now I can't find it. It just seems to be gone. Can you get it back?" "It looks like the mail server is corrupted. When was the last backup?" These sorts of questions, whether from faculty, students, or IT staff, can be an IT nightmare, or they can set…

All over the country, college faculty and administrators are plugging themselves into one of the newest--and hottest--technologies in an effort to better connect with students: podcasting. National studies show that more than 80 percent of college students own at least one device that can download and play recordings, and proponents of podcasting…

Simplifying and securing an IT infrastructure is not easy. It frequently requires rethinking years of hardware and software investments, and a gradual migration to modern systems. Even so, writes the author, universities can take six practical steps to success: (1) Audit software infrastructure; (2) Evaluate current applications; (3) Centralize…

Today, at the end of 2007, there are evident consolidations in wireless, storage, and virtualization and the path forward seems clearer now than previously. Trends from last year continue strongly, particularly Web 2.0 and the shift to user-driven environments and Internet sites where significant data and video processing is available to those…

Many of the information security appliances, devices, and techniques currently in use are designed to keep unwanted users and Internet traffic away from important information assets by denying unauthorized access to servers, databases, networks, storage media, and other underlying technology resources. These approaches employ firewalls, intrusion…