19 September 2019

Research pick: Dishing up a web signature - "Creating web signature for each individual user and its various applications"

Rozita Jamili Oskouei of the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, at the Islamic Azad University, in Mahdishahr, Iran, is working on the concept of creating a web “signature” of student activity online. Writing in the International Journal of Web Science, she explains how her findings suggest that contrary to popular opinion from certain media pundits and even some academics, access to and use of the internet does not generally have an adverse effect on academic performance, quite the opposite, she suggests.

Her development of a unique web signature for each student could be used by educators to better predict the demand on computing resources in an academic institution. It might also be used to group together users with common interests based on their online behaviour and be used to establish a social network between those users or open up such a social network to those who appear to be excluded or confined to cliques.

This social networking benefit could be most useful during a student’s early days in the academic environment, when they are still “freshers” as it could allow mentoring and guidance to be given by older fellow students or connect the new students to the requisite professional and expert advice to help them discuss problems and overcome any difficulties.

Oskouei, R.J. (2019) ‘Creating web signature for each individual user and its various applications’, Int. J. Web Science, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.83–103.

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