Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Department of Information Systems
Description
Employers perceive students are not qualified to enter the workforce. Students also feel unprepared to enter the workforce, resulting in a perceived skills gap between skills taught in schools and skills demanded by employers. My study examines the actual skills gap between skills taught in five Information Systems programs and skills demanded by employers in nine IT professions. In the scope of my analysis, I provide a discussion of my project methodology, answers for my research questions used to complete the gap analysis, and grounded recommendations to Information Systems programs on how to close the skills gap. Lastly, I also include future considerations that researchers may utilize to study my topic in greater detail. Students and schools can both use my analysis to improve their respective weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths in terms of hard skills required for the workforce.
ContributorsShourie, Varun (Author) / Sopha, Matthew (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
In the modern world of business, access to information can mean the difference between thousands of dollars. Executives at any corporation, large or small, would probably agree that they need to know everything and anything at the drop of a hat. As software has become more prominent in the business world so has the demand for an ever faster representation of business data. While traditional desktop applications have been used for decades to record, store, and display data, they do have their limitations. One such limitation being location—that is, they reside on a desktop. Remote access services have alleviated some of the pain that comes from location but there is still a need for faster access to data. Thankfully, the internet offers itself as ideal platform for fast, reliable, data retrieval. An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application manages several departments of a business. Most sophisticated applications handle accounting, marketing, ordering, invoicing, etc. plus other business operations processes. One such ERP is Evosus, a system designed for the pool industry. While Evosus is an effective ERP system, it does suffer from the same limits that any traditional desktop application has—namely fast remote access. Evosus is an application that stores all of its data in a Microsoft SQL Server Database. MSSQL Server is known for being flexible, secure, and easy to use. The use of MSSQL Server alone allows Evosus to be more flexible than many competitors. With a few simple programming commands, all of the data stored in the Evosus database can be effectively displayed in web format. Therefore, the limitations brought on by location no longer exist. Using the Microsoft product stack, a web application has been developed to display Evosus data on the web. ASP.NET MVC is used to help with the Separation of Concerns (SoC) that accompanies all web development. The website, called EvosusConnect, is used to demonstrate how, in a real world scenario, instant access to crucial business data can benefit a company, no matter how large or small.
ContributorsHoward, Carson J (Author) / Prince, Linda (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
This thesis paper contains all the information, processes, and scripts used to create the final SQL database and website for use by University Housing at Arizona State University. This project aims to resolve problems currently facing University Housing's Community Assistants with their resource distribution and processes.
ContributorsZugelder, Micayla Ann (Author) / Moser, Kathleen (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Financial statements are one of the most important, if not the most important, documents for investors. These statements are prepared quarterly and yearly by the company accounting department, and are then audited in detail by a large external accounting firm. Investors use these documents to determine the value of the company, and trust that the company was truthful in its statements, and the auditing firm correctly audited the company's financial statements for any mistakes in their books and balances. Mistakes on a company's financial statements can be costly. However, financial fraud on the statements can be outright disastrous. Penalties for accounting fraud can include individual lifetime prison sentences, as well as company fines for billions of dollars. As students in the accounting major, it is our responsibility to ensure that financial statements are accurate and truthful to protect ourselves, other stakeholders, and the companies we work for. This ethics game takes the stories of Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers and uses them to help students identify financial fraud and how it can be prevented, as well as the consequences behind unethical decisions in financial reporting. The Enron scandal involved CEO Kenneth Lay and his predecessor Jeffery Skilling hiding losses in their financial statements with the help of their auditing firm, Arthur Andersen. Enron collapsed in 2002, and Lay was sentenced to 45 years in prison with his conspirator Skilling sentenced to 24 years in prison. In the WorldCom scandal, CEO Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers booked line costs as capital expenses (overstating WorldCom's assets), and created fraudulent accounts to inflate revenue and WorldCom's profit. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison and lost his title as WorldCom's Chief Executive Officer. Lehman Brothers took advantage of a loophole in accounting procedure Repo 105, that let the firm hide $50 billion in profits. No one at Lehman Brothers was sentenced to jail since the transaction was technically considered legal, but Lehman was the largest investment bank to fail and the only large financial institution that was not bailed out by the U.S. government.
ContributorsPanikkar, Manoj Madhuraj (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Bots and networks of bots (known as a botnet) are a powerful tool in the world of misinformation. However, there are methods being developed to counter these tools. One such method is the use of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to automatically filter, block, and identify bot accounts and bot posts. Since the influx of bot posts and videos is too much for hired people to handle in any way that is financially reasonable for a company, AI can be the key to preventing the spread of information.
ContributorsStievater, Andrew Michael (Author) / Benjamin, Victor (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The purpose of this experiment was to research using Virtual Reality (VR) as a way for a home builder to experience their unbuilt home, similarly to home shoppers experiencing built homes through open houses and tours. It discusses the ideas and technologies involved, the process for developing a home in VR, and the observations found from demoing it to people. The research was started based on the "presence" effect in VR. Presence describes the feeling when the user is convinced that they are truly in the virtual world. The research conducted found that the main immersion creator and breaker is the interactivity capable in the virtual home. Through demoing a virtual home, it was discovered that the user was less sensitive to the visual quality of the house, and more sensitive to any inconsistent interactions with the house. If the user could physically open a door, but then not a drawer, they were shaken out of their presence. The research conducted also found that VR can provide enough immersion to make the home owner feel "present" in their new home if the application is built with a focus on consistent interactions throughout the environment. This application is capable of severely disrupting the current market climate and reshaping the way home builders decide what house they want to build.
ContributorsConigliari, Jason (Author) / Mazzola, Daniel (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The purpose of this creative project is to develop an Android application which teaches English speakers Sakha language. Sakha is the language of indigenous people of Sakha Republic in Russia's Far East region. There are approximately half of a million Sakha people. Creating Learn Sakha app will be useful for English speakers, who are descendants of Sakha but live in English-speaking countries, to learn Sakha language. For the application development, I utilized Android Studio environment and Java as the programming language. Additionally, I saved quiz questions in the JSON file to allow further scalability. Question class was created to hold the values extracted from JSON file. Also, I used Intents and SharedPrefences for saving user data. Progress bar, buttons, and onClick sound effects were used to enhance user experience. I shared the Learn Sakha app at different stages of development with my friends to gather user feedback. Overall, I learned how to create an application on Android Studio, improved my Java and troubleshooting skills. As the result of this creative project, I was able to develop a working Android application with four lessons, each with three stages. Currently, there are 16 Sakha words can be learned from the application. Repetition principle was used to improve learning of new words. I am planning to further develop Learn Sakha app as an open source project and attract developers, linguists, and designers to advance the improvements. Furthermore, this app can be extended to learn Sakha from Russian and be shared with other small languages, currently neglected by large language-learning platforms.
ContributorsEverstova, Rozaliya (Author) / Sipka, Danko (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05