A new journal paper: “Identifying the use of Information Systems for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in La Serena and Coquimbo (Chile)”

A paper in the “business for computing” area was accepted in the journal “Revista de Investigación Aplicada en Ciencias Empresariales” (Chilean Journal – LatinIndex).

The purpose of this article is to determine gaps presented by Small businesses in the Coquimbo region in the use of SIAs. Of the total number of companies surveyed (N =106), only 14% mention that they have a tailor-made SIA, only 8% of companies use a standard one. 52% of companies use excel as software for the analysis of their relevant information; which evidences a lack of professionalization of information management, especially if 19% of them control their information manually.
The main gaps identified in the organizational field are the fear of the unknown, along with resistance to change and low knowledge regarding the SIA concept. The gap related to the financial field is the lack or absence of monetary funds to implement SIAs that allow them to advance in their digital transformation.
The SIAs go hand in hand with the evolution, improvement and greater ordering in companies, so they must be encouraged and well used. Small businesses in the Coquimbo region, together with strengthening the competences of the human team, must advance in the use of their information in an efficient way to boost their productivity.

“A Practical Methodology to Learn Computer Architecture, Assembly Language, and Operating System” on the International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU)

The paper “A Practical Methodology to Learn Computer Architecture, Assembly Language, and Operating System” was accepted and presented on the International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU), Prague, Czech Republic, 2020.

The paper abstract:
 System-level details, such as assembly language and operating systems, are important to develop/debug embedded systems and analyze malware. Therefore it is recommended to teach every topic of these subjects. However, their learning cost has been significantly increased due to current system complexities. To solve this problem, several visualization techniques have been proposed to help students in their learning process. However, observing only the computer system behaviors may be insufficient to apply it to real systems due to the lack of practical experiences and a comprehensive understanding of system-level details. To address these issues, we propose a novel methodology where students implement a virtual machine instead of using existing ones. This virtual machine needs to execute binary programs that can be run on a real operating system. Through implementing this virtual machine, students improve by experience their understanding of computer architecture, assembly languages, instruction sets, and the role of operating systems. We also provide MMVM that is a virtual machine implementation reference and can execute the binary programs while showing the internal states of CPU (registers & flags) to users (students) to support their implementation. Finally, this paper reports the education results applying this methodology to 15 students that consist of 3rd-year students and 1st year of master students