INTRODUCTION TO ICT RESEARCH METHODS

A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic (in journal articles, conference proceedings, books and other relevant sources) by recognised researchers. Understanding the prior research on a particular topic is the basis of most new research. Researchers must know what has been studied, discussed and recommended by others in related areas.

This assignment is intended to:

• Provide you with practise finding peer reviewed, recent articles about one topic
• Allow you to organise your ideas about that topic in a meaningful way (including both synthesis and critical analysis).

In this assignment you will review the published literature on one of the following topics and write a literature review that synthesizes what you have found into a summary of what is, and is not, known on the topic. You should use the topic as a starting point and choose a focussed subset of the topic.

• User security behaviour - Information technology security is an increasingly important research topic. Although organisations spend large amounts on technology that can help safeguard the security of their information and computing assets, increased attention is being focused on the role people play in maintaining a safe computing environment. This issue is important both for organisational and home computing.
• Affective computing - Affective computing is “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions” (Pickard R.W., "Affective Computing",1997). Developments in affective computing facilitate more intuitive, natural computer interfaces by enabling the communication of the user’s emotional state. Despite rapid growth in recent years, affective computing is still an under-explored field, which holds promise to be a valuable direction for future software development. 

• Interactive game playing and network quality - Understanding the impact of network conditions on online game player satisfaction has been a major concern of network game designers and network engineers, and has received research attention from both angles. For example, a number of studies have sought to evaluate the effect of aspects of network quality, such as network delay and network loss, on online gamers’ satisfaction and behaviour.
• The effectiveness of e-learning - Education is increasingly supported by ICT, with the term e-learning being used as a general term to refer to many forms of technology supported learning. Much of the e-learning research has had a technology focus (e.g. descriptions of implementations) or has been limited to studies of adoption (i.e. will people use it?), but there has been less research on the impact of e-learning on outcomes for students.
• Mobile analytics– The term ‘big data’ refers to data sets that are large and complex and hence require new approaches to deal with them. Data analytics has become increasingly important to business and much research has been undertaken into how big data can be used to help organisations make decisions. Mobile analytics is a growing area of focus for data scientists.

To do

To successfully complete the assignment, you must begin searching for relevant literature immediately. The skills you obtained in your Transition or Foundation unit and have practised in tutorials for BSC203 will be invaluable.

Find at least 10 articles related to your chosen topic. To qualify as a source of information that you can use for the assignment, these main articles must report results of research studies (i.e. not just authors’ opinions). Each article must also:

• Have been published in a refereed journal or conference proceedings (though you may obtain the article through an online source)
• Have an extensive references section.

In addition you may choose to supplement these articles with a few articles from other sources or that do not present the authors’ own results.

After reading each article, you should think about how they all fit together. Your review should be organised by concepts, such as findings, rather than by sources of information. Do not proceed through the articles one by one. Your literature review should include an introduction, a main body that reviews the literature (and which you should subdivide further), and a conclusion. The Topic 3 lecture slides and Chapter 6 of the textbook will be useful to you in writing the literature review. You might also find the following resource from RMIT useful: https://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu/content/2_assessmenttasks/assess_pdf/PG%20lit%20review.pdf

Format guidelines

• Give your literature review a title that clearly reflects the content of your review.
• Include an introduction section that states the purpose of the review and a conclusion section.  Include other sub-sections to help structure your work.
• Use 12-point font.
• Your review should be approximately 1500 words in length.
• Include appropriate citations throughout the review and a list of references at the end.  Referencing should be in APA or IEEE style.
• Your review should include a minimum of 10 sources of information.