Norliza Katuk

The fingerprint is the most widely used technology for identification or authentication systems, which can be known as fingerprint authentication systems (FAS). In addition to providing security, the fingerprint is also easy to use, very reliable and has a high accuracy for identity recognition. FAS is still exposed to security attacks because fingerprint information is unencrypted. Therefore, fingerprint information requires protection known as fingerprint template protection (FTP). This paper aims to provide an organized literature on FTP. Three research questions were formulated to guide the literature analysis. First, this analysis focuses on the types of FTP schemes; second, the metrics used for evaluating the FTP schemes; and finally, the common datasets used for evaluating the FTP schemes. The latest information and references are analysed and classified based on FTP methods and publication year to obtain information related to the development and application of FTP. This study mainly surveyed 62 documents reported on FTP schemes between the year 2000 and 2017. The results of this survey can be a source of reference for other researchers in finding literature relevant to the FTP.

Consumers' interest in smart home concepts has been increasing due to the rapidly expanding home appliances industry that introduces Wi-Fi enabled appliances. Manufacturers provide firmware that allows users to control appliances using smartphones from anywhere. Smart appliances, firmware, and smartphones connected to a cloud server for data storage to form a simple smart home automation system (SHAS). This paper reviews how SHAS is implemented and its recent progress. The authors' observation found that there is a growing interest among researchers and developers to study software-defined network, web services, and end-user development tools within 2016 and 2018. This progress caused by researchers' and developers' interest to mitigate heterogeneity issues in SHAS.

Research in consumer science has proven that grocery shopping is a complex and distressing process. Further, the task of generating the grocery lists for the grocery shopping is always undervalued as the effort and time took to create and manage the grocery lists are unseen and unrecognized. Even though grocery lists represent consumers' purchase intention, research pertaining the grocery lists does not get much attention from researchers; therefore, limited studies about the topic are found in the literature. Hence, this study aims at bridging the gap by designing and developing a mobile app (application) for creating and managing grocery lists using modern smartphones. Smartphones are pervasive and become a necessity for everyone today. Hence, a smartphone app that can facilitate the process of creating and managing grocery lists for busy and working people is beneficial. The design and development of the app followed the rapid application development methodology. First, the functional requirements were gathered through interviews and content analysis. Then, a prototype named SMART LIST has been developed based on the gathered requirements, and a field study was carried out to evaluate the usability of the prototype. The results of the evaluation suggested that SMART LIST is useful and easy to use. The respondents also satisfied with the functions for managing grocery lists offered by SMART LIST. The study contributes towards an understanding the system requirements and user interface of a mobile app for managing grocery list. It can be a reference model for developers and researchers in the area to develop similar apps or enhancing the capabilities in creating and managing grocery lists.

Modern mobile phones or smartphones have multipurpose functions apart from being used as a device for voice and text communications. They are also embedded with many useful sensors, including camera, barometer, ac-celerometer, and digital compass. Unlike other types of sensor, the smartphone camera has been underutilized. This paper aims to fill the gap by analyzing and reviewing the hardware and software components of smartphones and highlighting the potential uses of the smartphone camera to support human daily life activities. A simple search of research papers indexed in Google Scholar was carried out using guided terms. The papers were filtered to match the research questions for this study. Only relevant papers were analyzed and reviewed. The results of the analysis suggested that the rapid development in the smartphone hardware has extended the use of the smartphone cameras beyond personal and social photography. Consequently, applications (apps) based on smartphone cameras emerge, such as barcode readers, document digitizing tools, augmented reality, translation tools, and indoor positioning device. These apps benefit users and facilitate them in their daily life activities.

Modern mobile phones or smartphones have become a pervasive and affordable device for users at different levels of age around the world. Smartphones equipped with many useful sensors, including camera, barometer, accelerometer, and digital compass. The sensors on smartphones attracted researchers and developers to develop mobile applications (apps) and study the potential use of the sensors to support daily life activities. Unlike other types of sensor, the smartphone camera has been underutilized. Analysis of the literature suggested that smartphone camera mainly serves for personal and social photography. Practically, a smartphone camera can be used as an imaging device for reading a barcode. Although barcode has been used for identifying products and items, the use of a smartphone camera as a reading device has not been explored thoroughly. Further, scholarly resources describing the fundamental knowledge of smartphone camera barcode reading is not available in the literature which could be the reason contributed to slow research progress of the domain. Therefore, this study aims to review the current trends and future directions of smartphone camera for barcode reading. Specifically, the study reviews the literature on the types of applications that are currently available and run on the standard mobile platform for reading a barcode. It also analyzes the necessary components that made up barcode reading apps. Further, the review identifies technical and non-technical issues that are critical for the development of the apps. The contributions of this work are twofold, first, it provides the fundamental knowledge on the building blocks of camera barcode reading apps, and second, it explores the issues in the current camera barcode reading apps that could encourage exploration towards addressing the issues. Practically, the findings could spark new research ideas to address the current issues related to the use of smartphone camera for barcode reading in the near future.

This study presents the architecture of a mobile application that accesses information from external databases. The application is intended for users in Malaysia to search halal information of food products by scanning the product barcode using their smartphone camera. Currently, the users use a mobile application provided by the Halal authority for this purpose. The application performs text-based searching according to the product names supplied by the users. The major limitation of the application is the accuracy of the user's searching key words due to input errors. This limitation can be improved by automatically scanning of product barcode using smartphone camera. Unfortunately, the product barcode information is not available in the Halal authority's database. Hence, the barcode information must be obtained from external databases and a link should be made to the Halal authority database. In designing the architecture, the Attribute-Driven Design method was adapted. The features of the other existing applications in the world were studied to identify the attributes that could improve the current application. The output of this method is the architectural design of the application that shows the components and communication flow between them

The present study aims to show if a skill-challenge balancing (SCB) instruction strategy can assist learners to motivationally engage in computer-based learning. Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory (self-control, curiosity, focus of attention, and intrinsic interest) was applied to an account of the optimal learning experience in SCB-based learning activities. Two empirical studies were carried out, where a group of learners were taught "Computer Networks" as part of a statutory curriculum at a tertiary institution. The empirical results suggested that a degree of self-control to compensate for the fully automatic SCB instruction strategy (i.e., competence and autonomy) would be of a greater value for learning motivation enhancement in adaptive computer-based learning systems.

The purpose of this research is to investigate student engagement in guided web-based learning systems. It looks into students' engagement and their behavioral patterns in two types of guided learning systems (i.e. a fully- and a partially-guided). The research also aims to demonstrate how the engagement evolves from the beginning towards the end of the interactions; which enables analysis to be performed on the quality of engagement. Design/methodology/approach — An experimental study was conducted on 41 students from a public university in Malaysia using two web-based systems as the main learning tools. The students' engagement data were captured three times during the interactions and once at the end of the experimental study using student self-report. Findings — The main outcome of this study suggests that student engagement was changing over time either in positive or negative patterns. The directions of change in both types of guided learning were mainly influenced by the students' background of knowledge. Practical implications — This study demonstrates that student engagement is dynamic. Therefore, progressive assessment is a practical approach to obtain the engagement data which can be used to regulate and improve student engagement in web-based systems. As a result, an adaptive and intelligent web-based learning environment can be created. Originality/value — This research proposes a new approach to improve students' engagement in web-based instruction, that is, through a progressive assessment of their current experience.

... Norharyani Zakaria College of Arts and Sciences Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia haryani@uum.edu.my Norliza Katuk College of Arts and Sciences Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia k.norliza@uum.edu.my ...

This paper addresses the issue of content sequencing in computer-based learning (CBL). In doing so, it proposes a Skill-Challenge Balancing (SCB) approach as a way to enhance the CBL experience. The approach is based on the Flow Theory, allowing self-adjustment of the given levels of challenges in a given learning tasks so that the learner will consistently be adaptively able to engage in the CBL activity. An empirical study with 70 students suggested that the SCB-based learners were significantly better in their learning experience specifically in their focus of attention and intrinsic interests compared to the learners in the system without SCB. The results also revealed that SCB was fully utilised by the learners to regulate the levels of difficulty of the CBL tasks.

Abstract—This article reports on a study concerning an optimal learning experience by curriculum sequencing systems (CSS) that is being frequently used in adaptive e-learning systems design. In doing so, we first implemented a CSS application – 'IT-Tutor' to teach tertiary ...

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the utilization of a web-based support system for flood response operation in Malaysia. The system is intentionally designed to improve process and data management towards providing prompt and effective response to ...

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the utilization of a web-based support system for flood response operation in Malaysia. The system is intentionally designed to improve process and data management towards providing prompt and effective response to ...

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) have been proven effective in supporting students' learning activities, but the actual utilization of ITSs has not been confirmed. Delegation of development tasks from developers to teachers through the use of ITS authoring tools (ITSATs) is not ...