The study assessed the knowledge structure of Grade 11 physics students and their instructors using Pathfinder networks. Instructors’ structural knowledge was averaged to create a referent pathfinder network. Each student’s pathfinder network was compared with the referent pathfinder network in order to identify misconceptions. These misconceptions served as the basis for remedial instruction. The study was conducted in six sections of Grade 11. Three different types of remedial instruction based on three different chapters from the Grade 11 physics textbook were given to the students at three separate stages. In the first section, students were shown their own and referent pathfinder networks as an intervention during the first stage. The students were asked to reflect on the similarities and differences between them. The researcher gave written concept-oriented exercises based on the differences at the second stage, and multimedia concept-oriented instruction based on the differences was given to the students at the third stage. The order of instruction was counterbalanced in all the six sections. After each stage, students’ pathfinder networks were reassessed and the similarities between students’ and the referent pathfinder networks were calculated to measure the effect of a particular intervention. The study tried to determine which type of remedial instruction given to students best improved the knowledge structure of the students in the domain of physics. Results revealed that the similarity indices around the treatment concepts in the pathfinder networks of the students increased the most from pre- to post-intervention phase because of their reflections, followed by multimedia concept-oriented instruction and written concept-oriented exercises. Most likely, the major reason for this change was the interventions around the treatment concepts by the researcher at three different stages which stimulated and probably changed some of students’ misconceptions. To address the issue of validity, the similarity indices of control concepts in the students’ pathfinder networks were also checked for improvement. The result shows that there is no appreciable improvement in control concepts as there was no intervention around those concepts. Findings support the use of structural assessment of knowledge with pathfinder scaling technique to check the effectiveness of a classroom instruction.

The study assessed the knowledge structure of Grade 11 physics students and their instructors using Pathfinder networks. Instructors’ structural knowledge was averaged to create a referent pathfinder network. Each student’s pathfinder network was compared with the referent pathfinder network in order to identify misconceptions. These misconceptions served as the basis for remedial instruction. The study was conducted in six sections of Grade 11. Three different types of remedial instruction based on three different chapters from the Grade 11 physics textbook were given to the students at three separate stages. In the first section, students were shown their own and referent pathfinder networks as an intervention during the first stage. The students were asked to reflect on the similarities and differences between them. The researcher gave written concept-oriented exercises based on the differences at the second stage, and multimedia concept-oriented instruction based on the differences was given to the students at the third stage. The order of instruction was counterbalanced in all the six sections. After each stage, students’ pathfinder networks were reassessed and the similarities between students’ and the referent pathfinder networks were calculated to measure the effect of a particular intervention. The study tried to determine which type of remedial instruction given to students best improved the knowledge structure of the students in the domain of physics. Results revealed that the similarity indices around the treatment concepts in the pathfinder networks of the students increased the most from pre- to post-intervention phase because of their reflections, followed by multimedia concept-oriented instruction and written concept-oriented exercises. Most likely, the major reason for this change was the interventions around the treatment concepts by the researcher at three different stages which stimulated and probably changed some of students’ misconceptions. To address the issue of validity, the similarity indices of control concepts in the students’ pathfinder networks were also checked for improvement. The result shows that there is no appreciable improvement in control concepts as there was no intervention around those concepts. Findings support the use of structural assessment of knowledge with pathfinder scaling technique to check the effectiveness of a classroom instruction.

The study assessed the knowledge structure of Grade 11 physics students and their instructors using Pathfinder networks. Instructors’ structural knowledge was averaged to create a referent pathfinder network. Each student’s pathfinder network was compared with the referent pathfinder network in order to identify misconceptions. These misconceptions served as the basis for remedial instruction. The study was conducted in six sections of Grade 11. Three different types of remedial instruction based on three different chapters from the Grade 11 physics textbook were given to the students at three separate stages. In the first section, students were shown their own and referent pathfinder networks as an intervention during the first stage. The students were asked to reflect on the similarities and differences between them. The researcher gave written concept-oriented exercises based on the differences at the second stage, and multimedia concept-oriented instruction based on the differences was given to the students at the third stage. The order of instruction was counterbalanced in all the six sections. After each stage, students’ pathfinder networks were reassessed and the similarities between students’ and the referent pathfinder networks were calculated to measure the effect of a particular intervention. The study tried to determine which type of remedial instruction given to students best improved the knowledge structure of the students in the domain of physics. Results revealed that the similarity indices around the treatment concepts in the pathfinder networks of the students increased the most from pre- to post-intervention phase because of their reflections, followed by multimedia concept-oriented instruction and written concept-oriented exercises. Most likely, the major reason for this change was the interventions around the treatment concepts by the researcher at three different stages which stimulated and probably changed some of students’ misconceptions. To address the issue of validity, the similarity indices of control concepts in the students’ pathfinder networks were also checked for improvement. The result shows that there is no appreciable improvement in control concepts as there was no intervention around those concepts. Findings support the use of structural assessment of knowledge with pathfinder scaling technique to check the effectiveness of a classroom instruction.

Understanding and communicating user requirements in a software requirement analysis effort is very important. Misunderstandings of user requirements between stakeholders will cause problems in terms of satisfying their needs, reduction of defects, cost and schedule during the software development process. This dissertation presents a new technique that has the ability to represent the mental models of the user, developers, project managers and sponsors (collectively referred to as ?stakeholders?) as network representations. The requirements are modeled as nodes and the perception of stakeholders is modeled as the interrelationships (links) among the requirements. The requirements are first extracted from a requirements document. The requirements are then categorized into related groups as perceived by each stakeholder. The relatedness (proximity) data collected from the categories is then fed into the Pathfinder generation program that results in the generation of pathfinder network(PFNETs). The PFNETs of stakeholders are then compared for similarities/dissimilarities using a graph similarity metric referred to as a correlation coefficient. During preliminary research work, this technique was applied to multiple student projects with real customers at Mississippi State University (MSU), and to a project at NORTEL, Dallas, Texas with encouraging results. This research was successful in identifying duplicate, ambiguous and misunderstood requirements. The next step was to validate this technique on small-scale and medium-scale projects in an industrial setting. During the summer of 2003, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and AmerInd Inc. jointly sponsored a collaborative industry-university research effort to validate the proposed technique. It was found that this technique is easy to apply and useful to gauge an overall understanding of requirements and identify potentially misunderstood requirements for small and medium scale projects. This technique scaled well from a small-scale project with two stakeholders to a medium-scale project with a little over one hundred requirements and six stakeholders. The correlations helped focus discussions on the requirements that were potentially misunderstood among stakeholders. Duplicate, misunderstood and ambiguous requirements were identified during the facilitation sessions. We also present a new technique that applies information theory-based software metrics to measure consensus about requirements among stakeholders.

Continuously changing system configurations and attack methods make information system risk management using traditional methods a formidable task. Traditional qualitative approaches usually lack sufficient measurable detail on which to base confident, cost-effective decisions. Traditional quantitative approaches are burdened with the requirement to collect an abundance of detailed asset value and historical incident data and to apply complex calculations to measure the data precisely in work environments where there are limited resources to collect and process it. To ensure that safeguards (controls) are implemented to protect against a majority of known threats, industry leaders are requiring information processing systems to comply with security standards. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Information Risk Management Framework (RMF) and the associated suite of guidance documents describe the minimum security requirements for non-national-security federal information and information systems as mandated by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), enacted into law on December 17, 2002, as Title III of the E-Government Act of 2002. This study proposes using the Pathfinder procedure to mathematically model an information system FISMA-required security control state and an actual information system security control state. A comparison of these two security control states using the proposed method will generate a quantitative measure of the status of compliance of the actual system with the FISMA-required standard. The quantitative measures generated should provide information sufficient to plan risk mitigation strategy, track system compliance to standard, and allow for the discussion of system compliance with the FISMA-required standard in terms easily understood by participants at various levels of an organization without requiring all to have detailed knowledge of the internals of the security standard or the targeted system. The ability to clearly articulate system compliance status and risk mitigation requirements is critical to gaining the support of upper-level management whose responsibility it is to allocate funds sufficient to support government security programs.