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The Technology Innovation Profile Series spotlights academic librarians who promote technological innovation in their community

IGI Global Profiles Doulkifli Boukraa, Head of the Information Systems and Decision Support Master’s Program at the University of Jijel, Algeria

By IGI Global on May 16, 2016
Encouraging collaboration on emerging technology, development, experience, and success, IGI Global has implemented the Technology Innovation Profile Series as part of our Library Technology Innovation Program. This series brings attention to today's leaders and specialists who use innovation and technology in their research. This week, we are spotlighting innovator Doulkifli Boukraa, Lecturer at the University of Jijel in Algeria.
Doulkifli Boukraa ProfileUniversity of Jijel’s Doulkifli Boukraa Name: Doulkifli Boukraa
Position: Lecturer, Head of the “Information Systems and Decision Support” Master’s Program
Institution: University of Jijel, Department of Computer-Science

How do you consider yourself a technological innovator?

Well, innovation is about providing new products, methods and ideas to a certain domain. Now regarding technology, I think of innovation as, not only providing new products or solutions to a given field or problem, but creatively applying these products and solutions to solve problems or make people’s life easier. In this context, I would consider myself a technological innovator in applying computer-related technologies to my work environment, which is of higher education.

The main aspect with this regard relates to the supervision of my students in their final projects. Thus, in order to better monitor their progress, I have been using cloud solutions for over five years now. The way I interact with my student has never been easier as I pushed this interaction beyond exchanging emails and documents to sharing and co-managing the projects folders on the cloud.

The second aspect relates to my career as a researcher. The problem of keeping up to date regarding the evolution, trends, and open research problems of a given field has been one my main concerns and I think it is also the concern of any researcher. In this context, I have been combining many solutions such as registering to social and professional networking groups of interest, registering to research-dedicated websites, subscribing to newsletters, creating alerts in search engines, etc. This way, I constantly receive up-to-date information about the domains of my research, and sometimes, I am provided with relevant research papers without seeking them.

What programs are you currently involved in?

I have been involved in a research programs from 2012 to 2015 about providing decision support techniques, applied among others to the educational field. Although the project is completed, I am still working on providing solutions to enhance the assessment of student but also that of teachers and teaching activities. The related technologies are mainly two:
  • Data warehousing that allows storing the necessary data and organizing it for analysis purposes
  • Data mining in order to discover hidden patterns in the student data
What areas of technological innovation do you consider the most exciting?

I think of two majors innovations: cloud computing and big data, although they have been around for many years their use has increased tremendously, supported by the advances in data storage and processing capabilities one the one hand, and in virtualization on the other hand.

What is most exciting in combining cloud computing and big data is that the possibility to overcome the data processing and storage limits that would be a bottleneck if traditional technologies are used. Moreover, to better understand a phenomenon or to make the most accurate predictions, companies rely not only on their own (structured) data, they combine external and internal data, of different forms and formats and in large sizes, as well. Now, the concern is less about acquiring, storing and processing the data; it is more about analyzing them to derive useful knowledge.

What technology-related projects do you see researchers working towards in the future?

From my professional perspective that is of a computer-science researcher in decision-making I think that the focus will be on big data and data science. As I explained above, since the growth in size of the available data is less and less frustrating, the researchers will turn to providing more analytical models that fit the nature of big data. On the other hand, this growth of data also poses the problems of privacy and security, especially when the data is stored or process in the cloud, be it private or public. Data privacy and security are real challenges to be met.

What advice would you share with librarians or fellow researchers looking to become a leader in supporting technology advancements?

The way innovative technologies are helping is incredible. Technology is everywhere and one needs only to select and use the most appropriate to your research fields. To this purpose, you must keep up date to with regard to the technological evolution in your field.

Moreover, I think that beyond using the technologies to solve research problems; researchers can also provide their feedback about the use of these technologies, such as their benefits and their shortcoming, as well as the new challenges that they bring about.
Calling all innovators! Share how researchers are encouraging innovation in their fields! Email Beth Ellen Dibeler at bdibeler@igi-global.com to submit a profile.
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IGI Global Profiles Technology Librarian Cindy Hart of Tidewater Community College
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