With the fast developing and changing transport of technology, new trends and learning opportunities were ushered in the field of Education. This transformation restructures the teaching-learning operation. As a result, educators encounter different learning preferences of students due to the emerging learning needs brought by technology. Although many universities here and abroad recognize the potential of blended learning, there is still lack of implementation on how blended learning be planned, designed and applied. 
In response to this need, an empirical study on the use of blended learning approach was conducted, which involved the mixing of face-to-face and online delivery methods. Thus, the main purpose of this paper was to find out the effect of blended learning (BL) approach on the students' performance in education subjects.
Additionally, this work presents instructional strategies on how to effectively integrate content, pedagogy and technology to enhance the teaching and learning of education courses. This provided the most effective and efficient learning experiences on both teachers and learners with its practical applications against retailed software which often burden many universities. 
Finally, some implications on how to effectively blend pedagogy and technology, which inevitably lead to significant enhancement of the curriculum, were also discussed.

This paper presents a project directed towards the production of a book in two versions, printed and digital, with the provisional title of "Design, Education and Technology: support for teaching Hypermedia Design, which constitutes a didactic material to support teaching and research activities for the Design area. The starting point was the work by Dr. Cristina Portugal, funded by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq, as a scholarship researcher in a Post-PhD internship in the Graduate Studies in Design Program. Besides the theoretical content itself, the project for the aforementioned book includes studies on information architecture, layout, programming language and navigability, among other aspects. The book will gather issues about Design, Education and Hypermedia aimed at offering resources to enhance the use of multiple languages that converge in hypermedia environments, their applicability, techniques and methods in light of Design in Situations of Teaching-Learning. The content for producing didactic material, the object of this project, is partially concluded.

Mathematics is universally accepted as mother of all science. Despite that, Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) has recently issued a circular mentioning that a person having master degree in mathematics cannot be considered for the post of scientists. The open question of 'Is mathematics a science?' is revisited in this paper under the new perspective to explore scientific practices that sans mathematics arrived knocking, challenging basic understanding of precision and practical sense that makes science. Considering the fact that in India, most crucial policy decisions at a higher level of abstraction in every conceivable arena of our national life are taken by either GOM (Group of Ministers) or GOS (Group of Secretaries), apprehension raises a basic query 'Who decides?' Some decision causes much unexpected consequence, which is noticed when it takes its toll and becomes virtually irreversible. This recent decision of Flexible Complementing Scheme (FCS), wherein mathematics is not considered as science, has potential to damage the very scientific culture and practices in India. This paper is an attempt to place mathematics in its right perspective and to highlight the damage that this decision might do. The paper also suggests ways to control the damage.

Steganalysis is the art of detecting the message's existence and blockading the covert communication. Various steganography techniques have been proposed in literature. The Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography is one such technique in which least significant bit of the image is replaced with data bit. As this method is vulnerable to steganalysis so as to make it more secure we encrypt the raw data before embedding it in the image. Though the encryption process increases the time complexity, but at the same time provides higher security also. This paper uses two popular techniques Rivest, Shamir, Adleman (RSA) algorithm and Diffie Hellman algorithm to encrypt the data. The result shows that the use of encryption in Steganalysis does not affect the time complexity if Diffie Hellman algorithm is used in stead of RSA algorithm.

Giving students extra credit work is a hotly debated pedagogical issue. This paper shares experience of using extra credit quizzes to push students to think critically and beyond the boundaries. This particular type of quizzes are not announced before and presented to students as a surprise quiz. A certain percentage of the grade earned in these quizzes was included in student's final grade calculations. With a well-developed model of questions, quiz structure and grade calculation, the presented model of extra credit eliminates negativity related to extra credit work and also motivates students into course work. Our findings showed that by relieving students from the mental pressure of testtaking andby making those tests/quizzes as extra credit; students actually performs better in solving harder problems and eventually learns more of the advanced course topics.

This paper presents a new combined symmetric key cryptographic technique, which is generally an amalgamation of Bit Manipulation, generalized Modified Vernam Cipher, Single Bit Manipulation and Modified Caesar Cipher. The technique proposed here is basically an advanced and upgraded module of SD-AREE cryptographic method, which is based on Modified Caesar Cipher along with Bit Manipulation and the SD-AREE module is very useful in excluding any repetition pattern from a message that is to be encrypted. The proposed method, SD-AREE-I Cipher, is a complete cipher method and unlike its predecessor, SD-AREE, does not need to be added to other cryptographic methods to make those methods stronger. SD-AREE-I method is used to encrypt/decrypt different file formats and the results were very satisfactory. This method is unique and strong because the method contains feedback mechanism and generates new encrypted output every time even with slightest change in the input file (message). The proposed method can also be used for network security.

This Software product line engineering is an inter-disciplinary concept. It spans the dimensions of business, architecture, process, and the organization. Similarly, Education System engineering is also an inter-disciplinary concept, which spans the dimensions of academic, infrastructure, facilities, administration etc. Some of the potential benefits of this approach include continuous improvements in System quality and adhering to global standards. The increasing competency in IT and Educational Sectors necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents an organizational maturity model for Education system for evaluating the maturity of multi- dimension factors and attributes of an Education System. Assessment questionnaires and a rating methodology comprise the framework of this Educational maturity model. The objective and design of the questionnaires are to collect information about the Education system engineering process from the multi perspectives of academic, infrastructure, administration, facilities etc. Furthermore, we conducted one case study and reported the assessment results using the organizational maturity model presented in this paper.

Due to tremendous growth in communication technology, now it is a real problem / challenge to send some confidential data / information through communication network. For this reason, Nath et al. developed several information security systems, combining cryptography and steganography together, and the present method, ASA_QR, is also one of them. In the present paper, the authors present a new steganography algorithm to hide any small encrypted secret message inside QR CodeTM , which is then randomized and then, finally embed that randomized QR Code inside some common image. Quick Response Codes (or QR Codes) are a type of two-dimensional matrix barcodes used for encoding information. It has become very popular recently for its high storage capacity. The present method is ASA_QR is a combination of strong encryption algorithm and data hiding in two stages to make the entire process extremely hard to break. Here, the secret message is encrypted first and hide it in a QR CodeTM and then again that QR CodeTM is embed in a cover file (picture file) in random manner, using the standard method of steganography. In this way the data, which is secured, is almost impossible to be retrieved without knowing the cryptography key, steganography password and the exact unhide method. For encrypting data The authors used a method developed by Nath et al i.e. TTJSA, which is based on generalized modified Vernam Cipher, MSA and NJJSA method; and from the cryptanalysis it is seen that TTJSA is free from any standard cryptographic attacks, like differential attack, plain-text attack or any brute force attack. After encrypting the data using TTJSA,the authors have used standard steganographic method To hide data inside some host file. The present method may be used for sharing secret key, password, digital signature etc.