It is difficult to convince students that proper software engineering methodology is useful until they face a large project with serious deadlines based on legacy code. Without a realistic experience, students often do not understand why software engineering processes exist or are valuable. Without legacy code, the frustrations of software maintenance and upgrades are never truly imparted to st...

Participation in the classroom has dropped precipitously in recent years. We describe the design and use of ActiveClass, an application for encouraging in-class participation using personal wireless devices. This system has been used in three sections of two different lower-division courses in computer programming at UCSD. Using ecologies as a method of analysis, these settings provide a rich s...

This article sets forth the early phases of a methodological proposal for designing and developing Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) initiatives based on a system perspective analysis in which the components depend and interact dynamically among each other. First, it focuses on those characteristics of VGI projects that present different goals and modes of organization, while using a cro...

• develop and monitor measures of attitude and operational change, including: key informant– agency participation and participation change over the period of the project; changes in the incidence and form of local media knowledge and reporting; incorporation of the SafeComm project and/or its components into the business of local government; and level of integration of cross agency collaboratio...

The Local Governance Technical Notes series is a publication of the Governance and Local Democracy (GOLD) Project made possible through support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of the GOLD Project Contract No. 492-0471-C-00-5089-00. The series provides information on key processes and tools in local government management, service delivery, citize...