Romain Bertrand
email: romain.bertrand@univ-lr.fr

Oriol Ramos Terrades
email: oriolrt@cvc.uab.es

Petra Gomez-Krämer

Patrick Franco
email: patrick.franco@univ-lr.fr

Jean-Marc Ogier
email: jean-marc.ogier@univ-lr.fr

A Conditional Random Field Model for Font Forgery Detection

Nowadays, document forgery is becoming a real issue. A large amount of documents that contain critical information as payment slips, invoices or contracts, are constantly subject to fraudster manipulation because of the lack of security regarding this kind of document. Previously, a system to detect fraudulent documents based on its intrinsic features has been presented. It was especially designed to retrieve copy-move forgery and imperfection due to fraudster manipulation. However, when a set of characters is not present in the original document, copy-move forgery is not feasible. Hence, the fraudster will use a text toolbox to add or modify information in the document by imitating the font or he will cut and paste characters from another document where the font properties are similar. This often results in font type errors. Thus, a clue to detect document forgery consists of finding characters, words or sentences in a document with font properties different from their surroundings. To this end, we present in this paper an automatic forgery detection method based on document font features. Using the Conditional Random Field a measurement of probability that a character belongs to a specific font is made by comparing the character font features to a knowledge database. Then, the character is classified as a genuine or a fake one by comparing its probability to belong to a certain font type with those of the neighboring characters.

I. INTRODUCTION

In the context of our modern society, documents include information related to highly strategic aspects, especially in terms of industrial or intellectual property. Documents also often convey financial information concerning economic relations between different institutions and between institutions and individuals. The analysis of securing documents is a basic prerequisite for each organization, especially those who are dealing with data of high sensitivity, since a person with criminal intention might try to modify information for his own benefits or to harm others.

Military organizations, public institutions, insurance companies, and banks are among the most important organizations who need to secure the management of information contained in documents, whatever is the original format of the document: digital or paper. For the former case, i.e. digital information, there are many automated ways to secure documents from unauthorized access, e.g. by using passwords, secured connections, or local networks which are separated from the outside. Unfortunately, none of these approaches can ensure a 100% security during some particular transmission processes. There-fore, the latter case, i.e. the paper-based information exchange is often considered to be the more secure and trustworthy one. This is often enhanced through signing documents, delivering them personally, or using FAX or photocopiers instead of email transmission. However, the paper-based process also contains security leaks. If any person involved in the process tries to make some changes to the document, e.g. by changing digits in a financial document, or by modifying some terms of a contract; there is the need to develop methods that improve the way of securing paper-based documents. Some recent studies have estimated that the cost for a company of not detecting fraudulent documents is in the range of 1.35 billion dollars, when including all the other fines, legal fees, and extra costs. These studies highlight the necessity to implement global strategies for protecting intellectual, industrial, financial information contained in documents of public and private organizations. In the context of paper documents, there is not system that enables a real protection of them. It is not possible to embed any kind of signature, or equivalent protection, that avoids illegal reproduction. Thus, the development of technologies able to detect illegal modifications of a document is becoming a very important aspect to protect original contents [START_REF] Elkasrawi | Printer identification using supervised learning for document forgery detection[END_REF], [START_REF] Piva | An overview on image forensics[END_REF]. There are several kinds of document forgeries to be detected. One of them is based on the detection of several fonts in the same document, as stated by forensics experts [START_REF] Malik | Proceedings of the 2nd ICDAR International Workshop on Automated Forensic Handwriting Analysis, AFHA 2013[END_REF]. Indeed, in most of the "classical documents" it is quite rare to find several fonts in a same word or in a same sentence.

Consequently, we can find many works focused on font recognition [START_REF] Bataineh | A statistical global feature extraction method for optical font recognition[END_REF], [START_REF] Zramdini | Optical font recognition using typographical features[END_REF], [START_REF] Satkhozhina | Optical font recognition using conditional random field[END_REF]. These methods are generally based on the classical classification process. They extract a feature vector to describe font properties and train later a classifier, such as SVM or a Neural Networks, to take the final decision. In [START_REF] Bertrand | A system based on intrinsic features for fraudulent document detection[END_REF], the analysis of strange similarities between characters of the same document (too similar to be true), and the detection of outliers in a feature space (alignments, orientations, width, height of characters) in a document was also proposed for forgery detection.

In this paper, we focus on the detection of words written with different fonts. This is a first step in the ultimate goal of detecting documents where one word has been replaced by another using a different, but similar font. This detection has to be done on the basis of a unique document, without any reference model to compare the analyzed one (blind approach).

We have organized the paper as follows. In section II we will briefly explain the features used in the proposed model. In section III we will introduce the CRF framework proposed in this paper. Then, in section IV we will evaluate the proposed methods and finally, in section V we will draw the conclusions and the further work.

II. FEATURES

We have used the typographical features introduced in [START_REF] Zramdini | Optical font recognition using typographical features[END_REF], [START_REF] Satkhozhina | Optical font recognition using conditional random field[END_REF]. These features are computed from segmented characters after applying an OCR system. In order to compute these features, four structuring lines have to be extracted before, as show in figure 1. Then, twelve features are computed regarding the dimension of a connected component (ie. high, short, large, squared. . . ). The following six features at a character level are computed: density of the horizontal projection, density of the squared values of the derivative of horizontal projection, average height of vertical blacks-run, average width of horizontal blacks-run, average normalized height and average normalized width [START_REF] Zramdini | Optical font recognition using typographical features[END_REF]. Moreover and also at character level, the following five features are computed: unnormalized height and width, xheight of the character central zone), xratio (ratio of xheight to height) and finally, ratio of width to height [START_REF] Satkhozhina | Optical font recognition using conditional random field[END_REF]. Additionally, the space between pairs of characters is also included in the model.

Since we aim to detect the forgery at the word level, our system differs from the above-mentioned work in how we compute the normalization. In fact, instead of considering the character features of all the words within the complete line, we normalize it by only taking into account the character features of the regarding word. We have embedded these features in a CRF model. Thus, for each letter, c; each font, f ; and each size s; we have defined the unary term of a feature x i,l :

φ i,l,c,f,s (x i ) = exp - (x i,l -µ l,c,f,s ) 2 2σ 2 l,c,f,s (1)
Similarly, we have defined the pairwise terms corresponding to features x i,i+1 of two consecutive characters, c and d by the factor:

φ i,c,d,f,s (x) = exp - (x i,i+1 -µ c,d,f,s ) 2 2σ 2 c,d,f,s (2)

III. PROPOSED METHOD

We propose to use of conditional random fields (CRF) to represent the knowledge related to each font contained in a document [START_REF] Sutton | An introduction to conditional random fields[END_REF]. CRF are powerful tools allowing to precisely describe correlations between fonts, styles and sizes of characters with features that are generally used to describe them. A CRF models the probability of a target random variable given a set of observations. In our case, target variables are the type of font f while the observations will correspond to the feature vectors x = (x 1 , x n ) computed from the document and the word w recognized by an OCR system. Thus, at word level the problem of font recognition is modeled by the conditional probability:

p(f |w, x) = 1 Z(x, w) n φ n (x n ) (3)
where Z(x, w) is the partition function given the observations w and x and φ n (x n ) are the so-called factor functions that describes each font f depending on the font, the word and the features. Then, the font is recognized by solving the Maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem:

f = argmax f p(f |w, x) = argmax f n φ n (x n ) (4)
The CRF models which used here are applied for both font recognition and forgery detection and are a bit more sophisticated than the CRF model briefly described in (3). The main difference is that most of the features described in section II are not scale invariant and hence depend on the font size. Thus, we have to deal with a CRF model with latent variables, like the font size. Thus, in the following we will describe a CRF model with latent variables that will perform font recognition at word level regardless font size. Then, in subsection III-B we will extend this model to forgery detection.

A. Font recognition

To apply suspicious word detection based on the presence of a wrong typeface, our system should be able to recognize font first. This results in the ability to assign for each word w its font among an a priori known set of typefaces.

We define the CRF as shown in figure 2. We denote a word by a sequence of characters w = c 1 • • • c N and by f = {Arial, Times, Courier. . . } a random variable to model all the possible existing fonts. Then, a random variable s ∈ S = {8pt, 9pt, 10pt,. . .} is used to denote word's size in points. Finally, we indicate by x i,l the l-th feature as defined in section II, computed from the character c at position i.

Font recognition consists in looking for the probability to obtain a specific font f regarding a word w and a set a features x. Therefore, the font recognition system is modeled by the conditional probability p(f |w, x) as defined in [START_REF] Zramdini | Optical font recognition using typographical features[END_REF]. Here, the font size s does not appear in this probability whereas, as denoted in sections II and III, somes features x strongly depend on s. Thus, we include the latent variable s in the model by marginalizing the conditional probability. At this point, we can express this probability by using the Bayes' theorem. Therefore, the problem is reduced to the estimation of the probability p(w, x|f, s) which can be easily computed in regard to the training set.

f 1 , s 1 f 2 , s 2 f 3 , s 3 f N , s N c 1 , x 1 φ 1 c 2 , x 2 φ 2 c 3 , x 3 φ 3 c N , x N φ N φ 1,2 φ 2,3
n-th word Fig. 2. Graphical representation of random variables involved in the font recognition model. x i denotes a vector with l features and factor φ i stands for l φ {i,l,c i ,f i ,s i } (x i,l ). Similarly, factor φ i,i+1 stands for

i φ {i,c i ,c i+1 ,f i ,s i+1 } (x i,i+1 ). p(f |w, x) = s∈S p(f, s|w, x) = s∈S p(w, x|f, s)p(f, s) p(f, s) = = 1 Z(x, w) s∈S i,l,f φ i,l,c,f,s (x i,l ) i,f φ i,c,d,f,s (x i,i+1 ) (5)
In [START_REF] Zramdini | Optical font recognition using typographical features[END_REF], Z(x, w) is the partition function, given the features x and the recognized word w. We have defined factors φ i,l,c,f,s and φ i,c,d,f,s in ( 1) and ( 2), respectively. Moreover, we assume that the a priori probabilities p(f, s) are equally distributed. We finally find the font f that maximizes (5):

f = argmax f p(f |w, x) = = argmax f s∈S i,l,f φ i,l,c,f,s (x i,l ) i,f φ i,c,d,f,s (x i,i+1 ) (6)

B. Suspicious word detection

We have done the suspicious word detection on the basis of the result of a previous font recognition. Thus, we consider the categorical random variable y denoting if a word has been forged, or not, together with the same categorical random variables defined in the above subsection. Thus, the probability of a non suspicious word given the font f , the word w and the feature vector x is given by (5) as follows:

p(y = non suspicious|f, w, x)= p(non suspicious, w, x, f ) p(w, x, f ) = p(f |w, x)p(non suspicious) p(f, w, x) (7)
Similarly, we define the probability of a fraudulent word as:

p(y = suspicious|f, w, x) = p(suspicious, w, x, f ) p(w, x, f ) = p(f |suspicious, w, x)p(suspicious) p(w, x, f ) (8)
We estimate the a priori probabilities p(suspicious) and p(non suspicious) from the training dataset and we model the conditional probability p(f |suspicious, w, x) using the unary and pairwise factors defined in (1) and (2), respectively. We assume that font forgery is done by copying and paste similar fonts from other document to the target one. Thus, for each letter, c; each font, f ; and each size s; we define the unary term of a feature x i,l as in [START_REF] Elkasrawi | Printer identification using supervised learning for document forgery detection[END_REF]. On the contrary, the space between two consecutive characters written with different fonts and/or size, can not been modeled by (2) and we define the pairwise term corresponding to features x i,i+1 of two consecutive characters, c and d by the factor:

ψ i,c,d,f,s (x) = 1 -exp - (x i,i+1 -µ c,d,f,s ) 2 2σ 2 c,d,f,s (9)
Note that with the above definition we are modeling the conditional probability that two consecutive characters to be written with different fonts and/or size. The probability p(f |suspicious, w, x) is given by:

p(f |suspicious, w, x) = 1 Z(suspicious, w, x) • • s∈S i,l,f φ i,l,c,f,s (x i,l ) i,f ψ i,c,d,f,s (x i,i+1 ) (10)
The final decision is taken by comparing the probabilities obtained in ( 7) and (10).

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In this section, we present how we process the evaluation of our system. Firstly, font recognition and classification is evaluated followed by forgery detection. The dataset corresponding to each experimentation is also described.

A. Font recognition and classification

In order to train our system for font recognition and classification, ninety nine documents were generated. Each one corresponds to a 300 dpi noise-free document image containing two hundred and fifty words from Lorem Ipsum generated by a computer in eleven typeface and nine different font sizes. These documents are considered as the training set. Afterwards, eleven documents of each typeface comprising fifty words were generated as test evaluation files. Their font size contents vary randomly from 9 to 15 points. Once these two sets of documents were generated, feature extraction is performed as described in section II and it is used as input in our system (see section III).

As a result, we measure the capability of the system to correctly label (eg. typeface class Arial) all the words within the eleven test documents as illustrated in table I.

The numbers displayed in the confusion matrix (table I)

show that the use of the CRF model at the word level lead to a reasonable classification process and, thus, to an adequate forgery detection. In fact, nine typefaces out of eleven, present a considerably high score when detecting the right label. However, if we look in detail, the difference of some classification results can be explained based on the typeface properties as pixel distribution. For instance, Courier New differs considerably from Liberation Sans while this latter is very similar to Arial as shown in figure 3. It is important to note that some of the test words do not appear in the confusion matrix. In fact, due to OCR errors, some of them have been removed from the testing data.

B. Forgery detection

Forgery detection process was undertaken by performing the same training process explained in the previous step followed by the evaluation of a series of tests. When modifying information in a document, the chances of making font types errors are often high. Therefore, the process allowing the evaluation of forgery detection was divided in a set of three tests. Each test considered a potential committed error when falsifying a document based on the hypothesis of the proposed method described in section III. At the word level, it is possible to distinguished three type of errors when the word has been modified (figure 4):

• Copy/paste: the space between a pair of characters differs from the ones between the rest of the pair of characters. It can be either smaller or bigger ;

• Imitation: a single word appears to be written in two different typefaces ;

• Copy/paste and Imitation: both errors, above described, might be found in the same word.

In order to evaluate the system, we have conceived a software allowing to generate some documents that we considered as forged based on the three types of errors. Each error was generated randomly on three words out of three-hundred (1% of forgery) over sixty four documents. Only six typefaces are considered here (Arial, Calibri, Cantarell, Courier New, Liberation Sans and Tahoma) in eleven sizes (from 8 to 16 points). As a result, 192 documents were generated and used to evaluate the performance of the system as illustrated in table II. The Copy/paste experimentation reveals the difficulty for our system to retrieve fraudulent words when the only clue about the manipulation of the fraudster is a spacing error between a pair of characters. Even if one over ten forgeries is highlighted, character spacing error does not appear to be discriminative enough to discover forgeries regarding the recall and precision values. If the score appears to be really low in this experiment, it is important to note that a word forgery will certainly lead to more than one imperfection caused by the fraudster. The next two experiments are designed on this assumption.

In the case of Imitation experimentation, we can see that one over three forgeries is retrieved by our system while this score is close to one over two concerning Copy/paste and Imitation experiment. Some forgeries aren't retrieved because of the difficulty for the system to accurately classify each character of a word. Thus, the system incorrectly labels some fraudulent words composed of two typefaces promoting one typeface over the other, resulting by an incapacity to highlight font forgeries as demonstrate in figure 5. Concerning the precision of these two experiments, the low values obtained here are mainly caused by Liberation Sans and Tahoma typeface as shown in table III. This drop in the precision value is surely due to the inability of the method to correctly classify this two typefaces as shown in table I.

Finally, we have to point out that for all these experiments, we have to deal with the error propagation issue caused by the OCR step, based of the whole features extraction process.

V. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER WORK

We present in this paper an automatic forgery detection method based on document font features. The method is based on a Conditional Random Field model which first allows to recognize and classify typefaces and then to highlight font forgeries. This work is a first approach to address the growing issue of document manipulation by fraudsters. Even if the actual state of the system suffers from a lack of precision, we obtained encouraging results which could be improved by easily adding new font features to the model. Moreover, adding information relative to the neighboring words could increased the font recognition rate and maximized the font forgery detection.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1.Illustration of four structuring lines obtained by typographical classification at a word level.

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Illustration of three different typefaces. From left to right: Arial, Liberation Sans, Courier New. As we can see, Arial and Liberation Sans are visually similar.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. Illustration of three different type of errors due to forgery. From the top to the bottom: Copy/paste forgery (space between o and n), Imitation forgery (two typefaces used), Copy/paste and Imitation forgery (a space separating two typefaces)

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Illustration of four forged words. Two are correctly classified as forgeries by our system (left column) while the other two are classified as genuine (right column) resulting in a classification error. Here, the classification error is surly due to the shape proximity of the font used to forge the word regarding the original one.

TABLE I .

 I TYPEFACE CONFUSION MATRIX AT A WORD LEVEL. ROWS DENOTE GROUND TRUTH WHILE COLUMNS SHOW RECOGNIZED TYPEFACES. EACH UNIT IN THE MATRIX REPRESENTS A WORD.

TABLE II .

 II RECALL AND PRECISION OF THE THREE EXPERIMENTS.


Jaana Holvikivi
email: jaana.holvikivi@metropolia.fi

Building Basic Competences for Culturally Diverse ICT Professionals

Keywords: ICT education, programming, cultural diversity, online courses, professional competences

The ICT profession is extremely international, and so are ICT students. University students in one study group in Europe may represent ten or twenty nationalities with varied cultural and educational backgrounds. Selection of appropriate teaching methods for diverse students is challenging. This paper describes cognitive differences in multinational study groups, and explores ways to overcome some of the differences through offering online programming courses to support classroom instruction. Currently, online programming tools are widely used in schools and outside formal institutions. This paper shows that they can be efficient also when building professional competencies.

Introduction

The student body in ICT departments is extremely international in European universities that offer tuition in English. Students come from many continents with diverse educational backgrounds. The diversity of students poses a number of challenges, simultaneously offering a number of advantages that the universities need to address. The situation has evoked much research and discussion among universities nationally and worldwide, generating a substantial literature on these issues [START_REF] Leask | Special issue on Internationalization of the Curriculum and the Disciplines[END_REF]. The main research approach has centered on a limited number of questions: how to recruit efficiently, how to generate income for the institution, how to help students adapt to the new environment, how to teach the correct behavior, and how to provide supporting studies. On the other hand, the contribution of the international student body to universities has been more or less ignored in research. Thus far, only few universities have attempted to modify their core curricula to accommodate a diverse student population [START_REF] Aydarova | If Not "the Best of the West," Then "Look East": Imported Teacher Education Curricula in the Arabian Gulf[END_REF].

This paper presents a summary of long-term case studies of the capabilities and backgrounds of international ICT students in the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences [START_REF] Holvikivi | Culture and cognition in information technology education, SimLab publications[END_REF], and aims at describing new strategies for developing competences in a diverse group. Moreover, it explores the impact of the emerging trend of global online education. The offering of high profile MOOC's (massive open online courses) by top universities, as well as other online programming and science courses, reaches students in many parts of the world.

First, some characteristics of western academic culture are discussed, focusing on specific cognitive requirements of technology studies. The gap in primary and secondary education between economically developed and less developed countries is exemplified. In the research section, some consequences of the educational disparity for international ICT education are presented. Finally, one solution to improve the current unsatisfying situation by strengthening competencies by online programming courses is discussed.

Western Science and Educational Practices

The academic world has largely functioned on the assumption of universality of western science, and the universal nature of human cognition [START_REF] Henrich | The weirdest people in the world?[END_REF]. Accordingly, most of the research that has been published in psychology journals has been conducted by western researchers (96%), using university students as test subjects (in 67% of the cases in American samples). However, the western sample of study subjects has been shown to deviate from other cultural samples in certain cognitive skills such as spatial reasoning and thinking styles, especially analytical thinking.

Similarly, brain studies [START_REF] Chiao | The weirdest brains in the world[END_REF] have been conducted mainly in rich Western countries, partially because of the high cost of the equipment and the high skill level required for research teams. Only in Japan, Korea and China has the technology been advanced enough to conduct brain scans on the local population [START_REF] Hansen | The Neural Bases of Reading[END_REF]. The inclusion of eastern populations has revealed interesting results such as brain differences in reading: the use of Chinese characters employs brain areas differently from using alphabetic characters [START_REF] Chen | Cultural neurolinguistics[END_REF], [START_REF] Yang | Brain networks associated with sublexical properties of Chinese characters[END_REF]. Moreover, basic mathematical operations are influenced by the language and writing system [START_REF] Tang | Arithmetic processing in the brain shaped by cultures[END_REF]. Additionally, decision-making and perception seem to be influenced by culture [START_REF] Henrich | The weirdest people in the world?[END_REF].

The dependence of cognitive variation on culture has also been discussed by Margaret Wilson [START_REF] Wilson | The re-tooled mind: how culture re-engineers cognition[END_REF] who introduced a theory of cognitive retooling based on the current neuro-scientific knowledge. She argued that culture exercises a profound effect on the cognitive system of perceiving and thinking, and even more importantly, on the functioning of the cognitive system. Cognitive tools are culturally transmitted through education, and the use of cognitive tools shapes neuro-cognitive architecture. In this paper, comparisons of cognitive and study practices of international students are presented.

The situation in Africa illustrates how weak connections to the practical life the education might have [START_REF] Van Fleet | Africa Learning Barometer[END_REF]. The curricula in African schools are based on western models, as well as most books and materials. Students hardly have access to computers [START_REF] Ang'ondi | Teachers Attitudes and perceptions on the use of ICT in teaching and learning as observed by ICT champions[END_REF]. The content of textbooks might be very remote from the everyday experience of students, adding an extra level of abstraction to the content to be learned. Therefore, students need to operate from two worldviews and often have two or more cultures to contend with, which results for them in rote learning without reaching a de-contextualization of knowledge.

Research and Results

The Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has educated international students in English since 1994. Our experience has revealed various kinds of challenges that students with developing country background confront when entering the western engineering education system. Our research has extended over ten years, indicating certain changes that have occurred during this period [START_REF] Holvikivi | Culture and cognition in information technology education, SimLab publications[END_REF]. In the beginning, students mainly came from Russia and China, later increasingly from Africa and South Asia. However, all continents are still represented among the student body. The variety of students ranges from monolingual Chinese and British students to multilingual South-Asian and African students.

Previous research and findings

Most conspicuous difference between developing country students and western students is their capability to combine theory and practice. An overly theoretical approach by developing country students has been revealed in laboratory assignments in nearly all ICT engineering courses that require hands-on work with the equipment, accurate measurements, or program coding. As students themselves report, these tasks are completely new to them, and they have not been trained in laboratory procedures [START_REF] Holvikivi | From theory to practice: adapting the engineering approach[END_REF]. The early life experience in western countries includes interaction with technical objects whereas children in developing countries tend to have more social interactions. According to a study by Agiobu-Kemmer in 1984, Nigerian Yoruba children spent more time with human beings than with physical objects. The reverse was true with Scottish children who spent more time with physical objects than with human beings. This comparative study indicated that cultural factors influence the way how the early upbringing introduces the physical world [START_REF] Lee | Personality and Person Perception Across Cultures[END_REF].

Student basic cognitive abilities also seem to differ in certain respects, in particular in the reaction times and working memory functioning [START_REF] Holvikivi | Cultural variation in perception and coding in IT students[END_REF]. A simple working memory test was given to groups of different nationalities, and the western and Chinese students performed significantly better in memorizing and in reaction times than African students. Van de Vijver [START_REF] Van De Vijver | On the meaning of cross-cultural differences in simple cognitive measures[END_REF] has previously reached somewhat similar results on reaction times. The working memory capacity of international students has not been studied previously, and even though the results of the study were unambiguous and significant, further studies would be needed to understand the phenomenon better.

The teaching methods in many affluent countries consist of little lecturing, and a range of possibilities for project and team work. Engineering study includes lots of practical work in laboratories. Even though students from developing countries find these new study methods appealing, the methods are perceived demanding as they call for more individual effort and need for self-regulation. Team working practices are usually taught in western schools and therefore university students are expected to have some previous knowledge of them. International students are in a less advantageous position in this regard compared to home students. These findings at our university are very similar to findings from other western institutions [START_REF] Holvikivi | From theory to practice: adapting the engineering approach[END_REF]. However, universities that primarily apply project based learning and team working methods are aware of the effort that is needed to become a productive project member, and try to address it [START_REF] Dalsgaard | Innovative application of a new PBL model to interdisciplinary and intercultural projects[END_REF]. Developing country students need to alter attitudes in studying and reflection to match teaching methods where individual knowledge building is encouraged, and questioning and criticizing are allowed and even expected.

Students who are accustomed to a lecturing type of teaching and straightforward drilling practice, find also mathematics teaching different. They might be competent in mathematical operations but when they need to concentrate on problem-solving instead of mechanical operations they encounter a new challenge. Their previous education has been concerned with acquiring a fluency in operations, which have been adopted as separate skills. The phase of deep learning has to be achieved next, and construction of sense-making units of knowledge needs still to be developed [START_REF] Bereiter | Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age[END_REF], [START_REF] Hakkarainen | Communities of networked expertise. Professional and educational perspectives[END_REF]. The knowledge and competences that have been acquired in home country education are less useful in the pragmatic engineering field where application of knowledge is required. To become a competent professional, the student has to reach the level of de-contextualizing knowledge, where she is able to apply skills in new situations.

Current research

One beginning study group consisting of 56 information technology and media students answered an online questionnaire of their study experiences and previous practices in their first study term in October 2013. The survey included questions on the experience of computer use, earlier use of computers in studies, familiarity with various study methods, and cognitive preferences.

The survey was given as an optional task in a study module; however, all students decided to participate. Moreover, they answered nearly all questions though none was indicated as compulsory. The ages of participants ranged from 18 to 34, with an average of 23 years. Nine of the respondents were women. They came from several regions: 8 from Africa (Af), 9 from Eastern Europe (EE), 9 from Western Europe (WE), 15 from South Asia (mainly Nepal, SA), 10 from East Asia (Vietnam, China, EA), and 5 from Middle Eastern (ME) countries. They reported being fluent in 26 different languages.

The survey consisted of multiple choice questions on technology use and understanding, questions on study modes and use of technology in the studies, questions on career aspirations and cognitive practices, and some open questions on the current studies. Respondents were given a link to the online form, which was implemented at Google drive. The form could be filled in at any time. Duplicate submissions were eliminated from the results.

Results

A few questions explored the time and place where the student started using computer. The background diversity was reflected strongly in the usage of computers before studies. About one third of the respondents had become familiar with computers already before age 10, 24% started using computers at age 11-15, 28 % at age 15-20, and 16% were older than 20 when they started using computers regularly. As could be expected, Africans had a shorter exposure to computers than the other nationalities, whereas western students had been using computers already very young.

Use of computers in school (fig. 1) gave a similar profile as the starting age. Only one African student had used a computer in high school, all others had started computer use at the university level, whereas 67% of European students learnt using computers in primary school and the remaining 33% in secondary school. Among Asian and East European students the distribution was more even.

Fig. 1: Use of computers in school by nationality

Previous programming experience or programming studies were not common among the survey population, as half of the students stated that they had not learnt programming before. Only 25% had programming lessons in school, but among East European students this figure was 56%. 30% of respondents had learnt programming on their own; 20% of the students had tried some online courses. (Fig. 2 According to this study, East European schools seem more science-oriented than others, but in fact the reason might be that students from there have been better informed when choosing their field of study than students from poor countries. Other interviews of East European students indicate that they often have previous studies in ICT, and come to strengthen their career opportunities by a western degree.

Few other questions explored the professional inclination of students. To the question "What kind of job are you interested in?" 60% responded that they were interested in programming as a job. On the other hand, 70% found working in software development attractive.

According to this survey, East European students also had the most traditional study experience and less exposure to varied study methods such as team work, research report writing or giving presentations. They also indicated little interest in natural world. To the statement: "I enjoy learning the names of birds, trees, animals and plants" they gave the second lowest average score, 2,0 (maximum 5). Middle eastern students indicated no interest at all, their average was 1,0, whereas the average in other nationalities was around 3. African and South Asian students had played only little with Legos, which was a shared experience among other nationalities. The frequency of playing word games varied from 2,4 (ME) to 3,8 (SA). (Fig. 3).

Experiments

All first year students were required to complete an assignment with the online version of MIT's Scratch, at http://scratch.mit.edu/. Scratch is a tool that has been developed for children and it teaches programming structures in an entertaining visual way [START_REF] Maloney | The scratch programming language and environment[END_REF]. The first demo programs show how to create a small animation. When student perceptions of Scratch were inquired in the survey, they were almost exclusively positive. However, approximately 10% failed to grasp the idea and develop anything functional, a couple of students even failed to follow the simple instructions how to start the program. They were among the previously computer illiterate students. In survey responses, two were negative towards Scratch stating that they did not understand it. Student quote: "I think it is useful but I am not being able to use it." On the other hand, there were many enthusiastic comments by programming novices, as well. A student quote: "I've never used Scratch before and I think this program is perfect for those who just doing their first steps in programming.

It is clear, funny and easy, I wish I could study it at school." In sum, Scratch was an appropriate tool for beginners also on this level of study, and for a diverse group of students. In fact, it would have been unexpected to get an opposite result, as Scratch is used worldwide in schools, outreach programs, and even at universities. Moreover, experimenting with Scratch seemed to have a positive effect on learning in the Cprogramming course that followed in the next term.

In our previous research, we tried to replace more demanding programming languages with Javascript as the first language to learn [START_REF] Holvikivi | Conditions for Successful Learning of Programming Skills[END_REF]. When the Ville online tool became available, we asked two international groups of third year students to practice Javascript programming in the Ville programming environment. The Ville Lego environment has been developed by University of Turku, at http://ville.cs.utu.fi. In fact, it includes a choice of several programming languages as well as mathematics, language studies, etc. This environment has a visual, user-friendly interface, which allows completely self-guided practice [START_REF] Laakso | Promoting Programming Learning. Engagement, Automatic Assessment with Immediate Feedback in Visualizations[END_REF]. Most students in our experimental groups had no previous experience with online tools, despite a substantial percentage of Europeans including French and German exchange students. They had taken at least one programming course, though. After the practice, students were asked how they liked the environment for coding practice, and the response was very positive. Around 70 students in two groups completed the required practice that included 60 tasks and took 8 to 20 hours to complete. Only 15 students failed, which was a reasonably good result for these groups.

Conclusion

Both Scratch and Ville are based on extensive research on learning and programming. They rely on visualization of programming structures, and automatic interpretation of code. Based on the three experiments conducted in this study, the selected online programming courses can be recommended to any group of international students. The great advantage is the large amount of simple tasks that can be completed on one's own pace. Drilling practice that the online coding systems offer seems to suit almost every student. More advanced students might become bored, but at that point they do not need the practice anymore. On the other hand, if students fail the simple practice, they obviously should not choose programming as a career. Students who come from developing countries, might have a poor idea of ICT profession, and have chosen it based on its importance. Their aptitudes in this regard are checked first when they start university studies. Therefore, some drop-out percentage is natural. Developing ICT competences in culturally diverse groups requires approaches that allow different starting levels and individual practice times. The online courses in programming that were used in this research have reached a maturity level where they can be considered as a valuable option for all students.

Fig. 2 :

 2 Fig. 2: Previous programming study by nationality

Fig. 3 :

 3 Fig. 3: Childhood hobbies by nationality


Angela Lecomber
email: angela@seedifferently.com.au

Arthur Tatnall
email: arthur.tatnall@vu.edu.au

Project Management for IT Professionals: Education and Training Issues

Keywords: IT Project Management, PMBoK, PRINCE2, Education, Training

Information Technology Project Management is becoming an increasingly important skill for all IT professionals and one that can be imparted through either education or training. This paper begins by looking at what is involved in project management and the two main approaches to project management: PMBoK and PRINCE2. We outline a core postgraduate subject in IT-based degrees at Victoria University and how this attempts to handle both concepts and practice, and a PRINCE2 training course. The paper then examines the issues involved in each of these approaches

Introduction: Projects and Project Management

A Project can simply be considered as any temporary endeavour with a one-time objective to create a unique product, service, or result [START_REF]Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge[END_REF]. It is distinguished from activities undertaken in business as usual which are repetitive, permanent or semipermanent. Unlike business as usual where general management is centred on repetitive and stable tasks, projects are the means by which change is introduced. Projects involve a team of people with different skills working together on a temporary basis to introduce change that will impact others outside of the team [START_REF]PRINCE2[END_REF].

The skills and knowledge of managing projects such as erecting pyramids, building cathedrals, creating aqueducts, building roman roads and conducting military campaigns has been passed down from father to son and kept within exclusive circles for generations from earliest times. Project management can be thought of as being like the art of cookery, which was also passed down from mother to daughter with good recipes kept within family circles from earliest times. Project management and cookery have this common denominator in that they are both an art and a science: both have evolved over time and both represent best practice which has worked; both require adaptation to the environment and will change according to customer needs.

The 'science' part of project management has been captured and documented well. Two forefathers of project management: Henry Gantt and Henri Fayol were very influential contributors. The latter set out the following management functions [START_REF] Fayol | Industrial and General Administration[END_REF]: organising, staffing, directing, and controlling. Project Management can thus be defined as the planning, delegating, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project including the motivation of those involved, to achieve the project objectives within the expected performance targets for time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risks [START_REF]PRINCE2[END_REF]. In other words, the project manager oversees specialist work on the project to ensure that the unique product, service or result is delivered fully to the agreed scope, time, cost, quality and benefit expectations of the customer who commissioned the project. The realisation of benefits, even if these are not financial, is the whole point of the project and why a customer would have commissioned it. In addition, the project manager would manage the risks that could potentially affect the project objectives as well as being focussed on the benefits that the project would achieve as a result of the creation of the new product, service or result.

Problematic Definition of Successful Projects

The definition of 'success' is problematic. For example, the project that built the Sydney Opera House was considered a failure as it cost more than planned, yet the Opera House is an icon of Australia and a huge success. Conversely, the project that built the Concorde aircraft was considered to be a huge success, yet Concorde is no longer in existence due to heating, structural and costs of operation. It is therefore problematic to categorically attribute failure or success to a project. The label really can only be made on hind-sight and sometime after the desired product, service or result has been realised and when the benefits can be assessed.

According to PWC Global Survey [START_REF] Coopers | third global survey on the current state of project management[END_REF], "Poor estimates during project planning are the largest contributor to project failure". The key reason is the lack of common understanding of what the project is meant to deliver when the project is being defined [START_REF] Tayntor | Project Management Tools and Techniques for Success[END_REF]. There are often unrealistic expectations in the early phase of the project, which is characterised by wild enthusiasm. All too often customer's expectations are not aligned with the project team's understanding of what the project entails, resulting in dissatisfaction when the project is complete. Another cause of failure is the lack of communication between members of the project team and the project board, sponsoring committee, customer and especially to the people (users) to whom the project is being delivered. Another deficiency characteristic of poorly managed projects is the inability to manage changes due to issues that impact the project.

IT Projects

Project Management applies to many different domains, but in this paper we will consider its use only in relation to projects involving information technology. One justification for the need to change IT project management practices is to improve their success rate.

There are many examples to choose of IT project failure and how IT projects could have been handled better, but we will look at only a single report by the Victorian State Ombudsman [START_REF]Own motion investigation into ICT-enabled projects[END_REF] in November 2011 on the development of some eGovernment systems in Victoria. These projects were chosen for consideration by the Ombudsman as they were seen to be complex, high-risk, large budget projects across various agencies in the Victorian public sector [START_REF] Tatnall | Major eGovernment Projects in Health, Education and Transport in Victoria[END_REF]. The failed projects investigated were: Link (Victoria Police), HealthSMART (Department of Health), Myki (Transport Ticketing Authority), RandL (VicRoads), Client Relationship Information System (Department of Human Services), Ultranet (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development), Integrated Courts Management System (Department of Justice), Property and Laboratory Management (Victoria Police), HRAssist (Victoria Police) and Housing Integrated Information Program (Office of Housing) [START_REF]Own motion investigation into ICT-enabled projects[END_REF][START_REF] Tatnall | Major eGovernment Projects in Health, Education and Transport in Victoria[END_REF].

What the Ombudsman found was that all these projects had been poorly managed and did not achieve their intended outcomes: "On average, projects will have more than doubled in cost by the time they are finished." [6 :4]. Singling out poor project management, the report further noted that: "… despite the extensive guidance and literature available, agencies are making the same mistakes around planning, governance, project management and procurement that our offices have observed and reported on for some years." [6 :3] Information technology project failure is seen by the literature to be anything from slight cost or time overruns to total abandonment. This can include situations such as: when the project does not deliver the benefits the customer expected, investment costs exceed the benefits of doing the project, the project does not meet all the client's or stakeholder requirements, it does not meet all design specifications or quality standards, it over-runs its cost or does not meet its scheduled project finish date, it has some aspect of its project technology not operating properly, it is not fully used or it collapses completely [START_REF] Tatnall | The Ultranet: an eGovernment Project Management Failure?[END_REF].

In addition, to the lack of common understanding or scope definition, lack of communication and inability to manage changes to the project, the Victorian Ombudsman's report pointed to the lack of clear accountability and responsibility as a key reason for project failure [START_REF]Own motion investigation into ICT-enabled projects[END_REF].

IT Project Management Education and Training

The importance of developing appropriate project management skills in ICT professionals is now widely acknowledged and is included in the Bodies of Knowledge of the major IT professional societies around the world. The Core Body of Knowledge for IT Professionals (CBOK) of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) describes six knowledge areas: ICT problem solving, professional knowledge, technology resources, technology building, services management and outcomes management [START_REF]The ICT Professional Body of Knowledge[END_REF]. Project management is involved is part of the last knowledge area 'outcomes management' which involves:

"… an understanding of the factors required to successfully manage systems development projects. Topics include: team management, estimation techniques, cost/benefit analysis, risk analysis, risk management, project scheduling, quality assurance, software configuration management, project management tools, reporting and presentation technique." [9 :24] All of the internationally used Information Systems Model Curriculum guidelines give significant weight to teaching IT project management. For example, the IEEE Computer Society's Software Engineering Body of Knowledge [START_REF][END_REF] makes frequent mention of the importance of project management. Similarly the ACM Computer Science Curricula [START_REF]Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Science[END_REF] and the Association for Information Systems Model Curriculum and Guidelines [START_REF] Gorgone | MSIS 2006 -Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems[END_REF] make frequent reference to both Project and Change Management. The Project Management Institute produced the fifth edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) [START_REF]Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge[END_REF], but this is not specific to IT projects.

Project Management Approaches: PMBoK versus PRINCE2

There are a number of accepted approaches to project management, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) and PRINCE2 being two of the most important. Although several other approaches (and often no set approach at all) are used in some situations, in order to keep this paper to a reasonable length we will concentrate on just PMBoK and PRINCE2.

PM Body of Knowledge equates to 'How to do' and 'Why to do'

The Project Management Institute's PMBoK [START_REF]Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge[END_REF] divides project management into ten knowledge areas and then describes what work needs to be done in each: project integration, project scope, project time, project cost, project quality, project human resources, project communications, project risk, project procurement and project stakeholders management. The latter was recently added in the latest edition published in 2013.

PMBoK is a body of knowledge of good practice and offers guidance to address a knowledge area. Although there are process groups and data flow diagrams, these can be highly interpretable. This theory is rarely understood until a student actually runs a project and relates it back to the theory for guidance. Even then, successful project outcomes typically happen when a student is managing a project under the guidance of a skilled and experienced project manager. Of course, there are those who may argue that it is not necessary to have guidance from an experienced practitioner to be successful as there are 'born' project managers where the skills are innate and they are naturally good at this. This may apply for those whose skills are innate but even 'born' project managers can still learn from a skilled practitioner and reference the PMBoK to improve their practice.

To use the cookery analogy, some individuals are 'born' cooks and really don't need a cookery course. However for most people, learning to cook is necessary. It is not a natural skill. Similarly, project management is not a natural skill for most people. However even the best of us can still improve with learning from others and best practice to get even better results.

The converse is also true: there is no guarantee that someone who completes a commercial cookery course can produce good food. Their work is really improved through practice in the kitchen: learning under an experienced head chef. Similarly, there is no guarantee that a person who completes a project management course can produce a project output or result that satisfies the client. If however, they are under the guidance of an experienced project manager, then there is a greater likelihood of producing a satisfactory output and benefit to the customer. This view is corroborated by the ACS ICT Body of Professional Knowledge:

"…ICT is a practical science [START_REF] Strasser | Understanding and Explanation[END_REF] and practical work as in project work or industry placements, is required at some point in programs of study so that learning of applied skills and knowledge can be fully developed." [9 :7] To use the cookery analogy, the body of knowledge is compendium of how to cook rather than a recipe book. Just like those cookbooks (particularly old ones) that have sections on 'kitchen and meal planning', 'kitchen equipment', 'methods of cooking', 'entertaining', 'sauces' and 'batters' for example, so the PMBoK can be viewed in a similar way. The PMBoK provides the theory or lens to view the project and make sense of the practice. This is very much in the same way that a student having done study of commercial cookery only really learns to turn out good food in a kitchen when under the supervision of an experienced head chef. The commercial cookery course provides the knowledge of how to cook and the theory of why things are done in certain ways but does not guarantee that the student really can turn out a good meal.

PRINCE2 Equates to a 'What To Do'

PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments 2) is described as a process-based methodology for project management [START_REF]PRINCE2[END_REF]. Even when a project is temporary, unique and introduces change, it is still a process but one that is underpinned by principles. Although each project is unique, there are similarities between projects and hence similar processes that need to be followed. PRINCE2's core structure is that it is made up of seven principles (business justification, learn from experience, defined roles and responsibilities, manage by stages, manage by exception, focus on products and tailor to suit the environment), seven themes (business case, organisation, plans, progress, risks, quality, change) and seven processes (Starting up a project, Initiating a project, Directing a project, Controlling a stage, Managing stage boundaries, Managing product delivery, and Closing a project).

It is significant that PRINCE2 is principles-based because processes are subject to the vagaries of the particular environment into which it is applied. There can be defects and therefore having a sound understanding of the underpinning principles of the processes assists in the efficient tailoring and application of the methodology to the unique project.

To use the cookery analogy, if PRINCE2 is viewed as a process-based methodology, it is like a recipe book with step by step activities that can be followed with specific descriptions of the documents and the fields required. It is prescriptive. It is a 'what to do'. However, the principles that underpin the steps are important and are like annotations in the recipe book that guide the cook and state the principles for example: 'Knead the dough till it is elastic and adjust the water accordingly'. So for a project it is like stating 'In planning, ensure there is a product focus rather than activity focus and undertake the product based planning till a level of definition that a team member is then able to build the output from'.

However, PRINCE2 can be burdensome and misunderstood. The problem is due to a lack of knowledge of how to apply or tailor PRINCE2 to a specific project environment.

Difference between PMBoK and PRINCE2

A whole paper could be submitted about the differences between the two approaches and there are a plethora of discussions on this. Siegelaub [START_REF] Siegelaub | How PRINCE2 Can Complement the PMBOK Guide and Your PMP[END_REF] provides a concise comparison. Briefly, PMBoK is a body of knowledge and good practice. It is not a methodology. It is not principles based and it is highly interpretable.

PRINCE2 on the other hand is a methodology. The difference between these means that the former is highly interpretable whereas the latter is prescriptive with process activities, with each activity having recommended actions with corresponding templates provided for each action.

However, the elegance of PRINCE2 is the fact that it is principles-based. This distinguishes it from PMBoK that does not have any defined principles underpinning the knowledge areas. By having principles at its core, PRINCE2 provides a unified reference for a project manager to assess the extent the principle is being applied rather than blindly mandating documents and activities to follow. This is a common trap in template driven methodologies.

The advantage of PRINCE2 is that it can co-exist with any delivery approaches for IT development be it Waterfall or Agile [START_REF] Measey | Agile and the Best Management Practice Framework[END_REF]. It is limited by not specifying activities to manage procurement and not having a Change Management Strategy that manages the people impacted by the change. It is sometimes seen as overhead in governance [START_REF] Ferguson | PRINCE2 for Small Scale Projects[END_REF].

Delivery Modes: Education vs. Project Management Training

The focus of this paper is to examine IT Project Management Education vs. Training for IT Professionals. The fundamental difference between education and training is that in education the focus is to provide learning that lasts. "Education can be described as what remains after one has forgotten what one has learnt in school" (Albert Einstein). However with training, people are shown what to do rather than really ensuring that they understand the underlying theory. Training does not allow for reinforcing, monitoring and encouraging which are necessary to ensure that real learning is acquired [START_REF] Kirkpatrick | Training Programs :The Four Levels[END_REF].

According to the Kirkpatrick Model, training alone is not enough, there needs to be strategies in place to ensure that what is taught can be effectively translated into skills and behaviours in the workplace. The Kirkpatrick model consists of four levels: (1) Reaction (experience during training), ( 2) Learning (the acquisition of knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence and commitment during the training) (3) Behaviour (mentoring and support that occurs post training in the workplace) and ( 4) Results (extent that targeted outcomes are achieved from the training) [START_REF] Kirkpatrick | Training Programs :The Four Levels[END_REF].

If the reader reflects back on personal experiences of training in, for example, how Excel training was conducted, it might have been that they were shown every Excel function. This leads to some level of frustration (due to lack of skill and experience) and little 'sticks'. It would have been better to have been taught some simple Excel skills with easy exercises to practice, followed by an explanation of what Excel is capable of and a list of functions that could be accessed when required.

Training providers

The type of training provider has a bearing on the delivery mode for training. There are three types of training providers in Australia in the area of project management: Delivery modes for these providers include face-to-face training, online training or a blend of these.


RTOs can deliver face-to-face classroom courses in project management and complete these in as little as four days with some homework that results in the award of the Certificate IV in project management. The Diploma takes longer and the shortest length of time could be two months which usually requires students to submit evidence from real projects that they have worked on.

ATOs can deliver face-to-face training which leads to the award of the PRINCE2 Foundation qualification in three days and the Practitioner qualification in a further two days after the award of the Foundation. PMI registered training providers offer a short five day coaching session to prepare students for a PMP exam. However the award of the PMP is subject to a number of requirements other than the exam which includes evidence of current experience in managing projects.

Unlike the PMP and the Certificate IV and Diploma of Project Management, there is no minimal entry requirement for PRINCE2. It therefor provides more accessibility to anyone wanting to learn project management and offers an excellent starting point and clear methodology that provides real value to novice. However it is the delivery and assessment method that can pose problems in terms of real learning.

Outdated course material

The accreditation system for training providers rather than the methodology can result in outdated material that does not support the aims of learning. The restrictions imposed by the accreditor for courses such as PRINCE2 stifles the ability to update courseware regularly so the same material gets churned out year after year and material is not updated regularly enough to meet the learning needs of the students. The system does not easily encourage changes to the material once it is endorsed because it costs the ATO time and money to change courseware (there is a fee payable to the accrediting body to review the revised material). Therefore good educators who intuitively would like to update material after the course from lessons learned are not able to. This is where any course under the AXELOS umbrella that awards qualification in PRINCE2 falls short.

Courseware under the ASQA authority suffers less from this. It is far more easily updated and kept current due to the lesser restrictions imposed. Courses only need to demonstrate mapping to competency levels and performance criteria. Only samples of actual courseware are necessarily reviewed (rather than the full suite of material as with AXELOS) for consistency and there is freedom for the trainer and the RTO to create new versions of courseware without necessarily incurring costs (other than their time). This means that material is likely to be current and meet the changing needs of learners. This reflects a model that fits more closely with education.

Online material is in danger of being 'dated' unless the training provider is willing to pay for updates to their online courseware. Online courses are 'price sensitive'. So it is unlikely that the training provider will want to spend money and erode profit to update material as they know that their customer (the learner) has no way of knowing if the material is current. This is particularly concerning since trends published by a leading training provider sponsored by Computer Weekly state the trend in 2014 is for IT professionals to adopt online methods due to the lack of commitment by organisations to provide training to staff and if they do, the cheaper option is selected. Project professionals have a choice: they can either take the training or they can let their skills calcify [START_REF]Top Ten Project Management Trends for[END_REF]. According to the article, training today is shifting, faster and faster, to the Internet accessed by desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Delivery is dispersed in 'chunks' of video components, webinars, and online modules. Notwithstanding the question of online learning versus classroom learning, the question is how up-to-date is the material and how well has it met the learner's needs?

Limitations due to the delivery method

PRINCE2 training courses do not equip participants with practical skills to create a project plan and to discuss issues and risks that would typically occur on a Diploma of Project Management course or one based on PMBoK delivered by an RTO or University. Furthermore, PRINCE2 training courses do not focus on techniques such as learning to use scheduling software like Microsoft Project. Whilst it is beneficial to be unencumbered by not having software to learn on a course, it does mean that PRINCE2 qualified practitioners need to undertake separate training to learn these techniques.

Assessment methods

The method of assessment has a bearing on the quality of the experience during training and the learning that actually happens. Students present different learning styles with some preferring written assignments and essays whilst others prefer verbal assessment and practical case studies to work with.

The assessment method for PRINCE2® is objective testing (multiple-choice). This has merits in ensuring there is correct understanding of the concepts. The exam questions are tested and moderated from a comprehensive question bank. It is a good examination method, but the PRINCE2 Practitioner examination is based on full PRINCE2. This full methodology does not provide much value to those with little experience or opportunity after the course to the skills. This is particularly obvious with those new to project management who are typically assigned small low risk projects in the work place that might not require the full application of PRINCE2 to manage them. According to Ferguson [START_REF] Ferguson | PRINCE2 for Small Scale Projects[END_REF], these individuals may not have the knowledge or experience to tailor PRINCE2 to their projects. This could lead to an ad-hoc approach to small projects with potentially poor outcomes [START_REF] Ferguson | PRINCE2 for Small Scale Projects[END_REF]. Hence a weakness of the standard offering for PRINCE2 training does not provide skills in using 'light' PRINCE2 which is more applicable to small projects. There is a need for 'Light PRINCE2' as a course in order to provide a simple methodology to enable the many IT Professionals who have not had the experience nor the support to know how to apply the principles lightly.

On the other hand, the assessment methods for courses under ASQA accreditation allow flexibility to cater for different learner styles. Course accreditation with ASQA requires that material caters for all learning and special needs (for example when English is not the first language). Typically these include short quizzes, case-studies worked on in class, a final written examination and the submission of a body of evidence (records of assessment) of practical work carried out by the project manager to demonstrate competency. The assessment methods are competency based on PMBoK, with students required to demonstrate attainment of performance criteria against each of the competencies stated for the qualification. For example the Diploma of Project Management requires attainment of ten competencies to match the ten knowledge areas.

In summary, training is limited in delivering the behavioural indicators that make up a successful project manager. Chaves [START_REF] Chaves | Education versus Training[END_REF] cites his organisation (a financial services company with $100 billion in assets), opting for education rather than training in achieving the competencies required on IT projects. The students work collaboratively dissecting past projects and learning from on the job examples of project success and challenge. This approach together with a project management office offering standard templates, processes and access to mentors was found to provide much better outcomes, increased quality and reduced rework in project delivery [START_REF] Chaves | Education versus Training[END_REF] than standard project management training courses.

A Postgraduate Course on IT Project Management at Victoria University

In designing a university course, a holistic approach should be taken so that the core body of knowledge areas and ICT role specific knowledge are planned into schemes of work. Ultimately the aim is to ensure that the students are supported and mentored.

A degree of practical work underpinned by theory is required. One of the underlying tenets to designing a course is that "information is not knowledge" and that "the only source of knowledge is experience" (Albert Einstein). The objective for learning is to design a course that both internalises the learning and provides practical changes in behaviour in the workplace. This is supported by the ACS ICT Profession Body of Knowledge that suggests that when designing a university course "structure should scaffold advanced knowledge on top of programming fundamentals and project management topics from the ICT Knowledge Area of the CBOK." [9 :15] The teaching of IT project management lends itself particularly well to practice reinforcing theory and this subject is based on belief in the value of integrating both theory and the practical component of any Information Systems course. This idea is not new and was articulated well by Little and Margetson over 20 years ago. They suggest that:

"No amount of learning about something will, alone, prepare a student adequately to practise a particular skill or to make use of knowledge in a sensible, appropriate, and effective way. This is even more so when the learning in question concerns the design, development, and operation of computer-based information systems." [20 :131] Hosseini [START_REF] Hosseini | Application of Bloom's Taxonomy and Piaget Model of Cognitive Processes to Teaching of Management Information Systems Concepts[END_REF] identified challenges of teaching Management Information Systems concepts to students, saying that the abstract nature of concepts around development and management of IT systems make these concepts difficult to teach in the classroom and that as they often lack a practical frame of reference students often miss the various nuances of IT issues, especially at a managerial level. Before this, Piaget [START_REF] Piaget | Understanding Causality[END_REF] proposed his model of 'cognitive information processing' that argued that in order for a person to understand some new concept or piece of information, this new information must be integrated into the person's own schemata of knowledge and be somehow linked to what the person already understands or knows so that they can see how it all fits in with their view of reality. Piaget named this personal view of reality a 'logico-mathematical structure'.

IT Project Management involves a lot more than just project planning and scheduling. It is also concerned with controlling the on-going project during its whole life, and reporting on project progress. Our research and discussions with students has shown that, despite some problems currently inherent in the use of project management software, it is quite possible to provide students with useful project management skills through the use of this software. Several of the assignments are based on the use of adequate size, dynamic and on-going case studies and involve students using Microsoft Project for planning, scheduling, monitoring, controlling and reporting [START_REF] Tatnall | IT Project Management: Developing On-Going Skills in the Management of Software Development Projects[END_REF].

Course content

The subject Information Technology Project Management is a core subject in the masters-level information systems related courses at Victoria University. It concentrates on both the management of IT projects and the use of computer software in the management of these and other projects and aims to show how knowledge of the appropriate application of such skills is vital to Information Systems professionals and managers in the performance of their many functions in an organisation. Subject content [24] includes: Project management fundamentals, Project management methodologies (including PMBoK and PRINCE2), Project management software tools, Defining the problem -the project goal, project charter, Developing the project plan and schedule, Monitoring and control of the project once it has commenced, Building the project team, management of conflict, Implementation difficulties, Risk assessment and project failure, Innovation and the management of technological change, Cost control, Reporting on project status and Software engineering project case studies.

Assessment is based on a number of assignments related to a real project. As the course is conducted over twelve weeks, so is the duration of the project. It is usually one involving the implementation of an ERP system in a small business. The project is initiated in the first week of the course, controlled and delivered in the final week to time, cost, quality, scope and benefits when the students submit their closure report and on the same day sit a short final objective testing examination.

Students have to produce a Project Charter (containing a business case and a clear statement of scope), then plan the project (using Microsoft Project), manage the issues and changes in the project from week to week as provided by the lecturer at each session (project monitoring and control using Microsoft Project), create a benefits review plan for the project and finally report on the project once it has delivered its output to customer satisfaction.

In addition, throughout the course students present a seminar paper and work on syndicate exercises based on real case studies of project management implementations. The methodology introduced to the students is both PMBoK and a lighter version of PRINCE2. Rather than present the two approaches as competing with each other, the focus is on skills and an appreciation of the real value of the application of PMBoK and PRINCE2 in the workplace. There is no pressure to learn PRINCE2 by rote in order to pass an exam but to demonstrate its value in working on the project.

The Victoria University course seeks to inculcate real learning in IT Professionals or those aspiring to be. It offers real learning opportunities compared with the standard offering of a PRINCE2 training course.

Conclusion

Increasingly organizations use project management to drive their business objectives [START_REF] Coopers | third global survey on the current state of project management[END_REF]. Outcomes in terms of project management skills, knowledge and confidence are a function of both the method of delivery and methods of assessment. Clearly project management courses that provide real projects for participants to work with throughout the course and case studies in which they are able to constructively build their knowledge will have more value to the IT professional than bland objective testing. The former works on a deeper level and enables skills to be practised in a safe environment. This is what the Masters in IT Project Management at Victoria University aims to do.

The PRINCE2 training delivery mode does not allow time for IT Professionals to really internalise how to apply the principles to their workplace. Although the PRINCE2 course and examination is based on a scenario, the problems that an IT Professional faces in the workplace requires on-going support and mentoring that is not provided by the course once the PRINCE2 qualification is achieved.

The Victoria University course is refreshed each year with new perspectives keeping up with the latest developments in project management. After all, project management is both an art and a science and needs to keep current with the latest developments year by year in the business world.

  Registered training organisations (RTOs) registered by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) which offer the Certificate IV, Diploma and Advanced Diploma of Project Management. These can include Universities but more typically are independent training providers.

 Accredited training organisations (ATOs) overseen by the international APMG and the Global Certification Institute (not an exhaustive list) who accredit project management best practice methodologies such as PRINCE2 on behalf of AXELOS (the UK consortium who own the Intellectual Property). It is significant that Universities cannot be ATOs and therefore are not able to offer PRINCE2 training.  Project Management Institute (PMI) registered training provider. These support the attainment of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP).