No abstract

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018 imposes much greater demands on companies to address the rights of individuals who provide data, that is, Data Subjects. The new law requires a much more transparent approach to gaining consent to process personal data. However, few obvious changes to how consent is gained from Data Subjects to comply with this. Many companies are running the risk of non-compliance with the law if they fail to address how data are obtained and the lack of true consent which Data Subjects currently give to their data being processed. Consent is a complex philosophical principle which relies on the person giving the consent being in full possession of the facts, this article explores the philosophical background of consent and examines the circumstances which were the point of departure for the debate on consent and attempts to develop an understanding of it in the context of the growing influence of information systems and the data-driven economy. The GDPR has gone further than any other regulation or law to date in developing an understanding of consent to address personal data and privacy concerns.

Much of modern education is steeped in the acquisition of skills that will strengthen the employability prospects of learners. The concept of work-readiness has come to mean framing the academic curriculum with as many opportunities for gaining the experience of work as possible and thereby developing those professional skills that industry demands of new Computing graduates. This has led to, among other provisions, the embedding of work-related, work-based and project-based components into the academic curriculum for which newer forms of assessment and feedback are necessary. This paper reports on a study conducted with a cohort of Computing students whose degree includes an embedded final year work-related learning (WRL) module. Findings from a previous pilot study highlighted the severe lack of awareness and understanding on the part of students for competency building. In order to tackle this deficiency, this current work employs an adapted competency framework, developmental feedback and self-evaluation tools for direct use on the work-related learning module. This powerful combination of tools results in significant improvement in students' perceptions regarding their competencies with overall module performance also increasing significantly. More importantly, it has been possible, through cluster analysis and dimension reduction, to optimise the competency framework to a condensed form which can be readily utilised throughout the work experience.

Abstract. Our detailed investigation into various approaches to evaluate Information Systems Development methods has shown that numerous attempts to assess these methods only yield inconclusive and questionable results. There are two general trends as to how various criteria for evaluation are organised. There are relatively ad hoc lists of criteria for evaluation, and systematically organised frameworks, which generally provide more authoritative assessment results. However, the frameworks investigated are too generic and disproportionate in their emphases on certain parts of a method. Our initial motivation was the development of a framework for assessment of Component-based Software Development methods. However, in response to the shortcomings in existing approaches to method evaluation, a more generic framework that can be used to evaluate various types of Information Systems Development methods such as object-oriented methods, structured methods etc, is presented in this paper. The proposed framework defines three major elements of a method, namely, System Models, System Development Process and Software Architecture. This paper discusses the technique for evaluation of System Models and due to limitations on length of the paper, discussions on the evaluation of the other two elements are not included.

The provision of assessment feedback to students is an area which has received much interest in modern education, particularly in the Higher Education context. As current pedagogic practices strongly encourage the provision of feedback and given also the advances in digital technology, feedback mechanisms are becoming ever more sophisticated. However, considering that a great deal of effort is expended on timely, actionable and constructive feedback by tutors, the student perception of the value of the feedback given to them is not as positive as it could be. Currently a multitude of feedback practices have been developed and utilised, though with varying degrees of productiveness. Research in this area is understandably extremely broad as subject disciplines, use of technology, assessment types, methods and tools, educator preferences, student audience and peer and self-assessment capability all have a significant part to play. Given that the approaches to providing feedback are myriad, it is desirable to advance a systematic method of understanding the most constructive feedback types. This paper describes the development of a taxonomical classification which provides structure, order and frame to current popular practices that have evolved during the last decade. The taxonomy is then evaluated with the use of dimensions such as effectiveness/impact, satisfaction, adoption/engagement and quantity of feedback. The main finding of the taxonomical evaluation is the significance of developmental feed-forward guidance with which students are able to self-regulate and evaluate themselves. The paper concludes that this powerful combination should underpin further investigations into how assessment and feedback provision can be optimised for the experiential learning domain in general and to the work-based learning area in particular.