Determining the Effectiveness of Using Linux Operating System Demonstrations to Illustrate Message Digest Concepts and Vulnerabilities
Dennis Guster, Paul Safonov, Richard Sundheim, and Renat Sultanov
Many ways help insure file integrity, but one of the most common is the application of a message digest algorithm. A message digest is a fixed string number which represents a file uniquely. Teaching complex concepts such as the application of message digests using only the lecture method have often resulted in limited success. Because information Technology students typically learn most effectively when they can relate material to its application in the real world, a comparative study was devised. This study was designed to compare student achievement and attitude of two groups of students. One group received a traditional lecture presentation, and the other received a presentation featuring demonstrations of file integrity concepts using the Linux operating system. After adjusting for course grade as a co-variant, students who received the demonstration method did not attain significantly higher achievement, but displayed significantly better attitude than did those who received the lecture method.
Keywords: computer science education, information evaluation, information quality, computer auditing, data security and data encryption.
Dr. Dennis Guster earned his Doctorate at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Currently he is a Professor of Business Computer Information Systems and the Director of the Business Computer Research Laboratory at St. Cloud State University. His research interests include computer security, network performance analysis and active instructional methods.
Dr. Paul Safonov earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at the Institute of Control Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Currently he is Assistant Professor of Business Computer Information Systems at St. Cloud State University. His research interests include computer modeling and decision support systems, computer security and networking.
Dr. Richard Sundheim earned his Doctorate at Purdue University. Currently he is a Professor of Business Computer Information Systems at St. Cloud State University. His research interests include data analysis, SAS programming and data mining.
Dr. Renat Sultanov earned his Ph. D. at Tashkent State University. Currently he is a Research Scientist working in the area of distributed processing and security at the Business Computing Research Laboratory, St. Cloud State University. He has held research positions at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, and at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
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