Software Engineering Students Research Articles

Towards data-driven software engineering skills assessment

Purpose Today’s software engineers often work in teams to develop complex software systems. Therefore, successful software engineering in practice require team members to possess not only sound programming skills such as analysis, design, coding and testing but also soft skills such as communication, collaboration and self-management. However, existing examination-based assessments are often inadequate for quantifying students’ soft skill development. The purpose of this paper is to explore alternative ways for assessing software engineering students’ skills through a data-driven approach. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the exploratory data analysis approach is adopted. Leveraging the proposed online agile project management tool – Human-centred Agile Software Engineering (HASE), a study was conducted involving 21 Scrum teams consisting of over 100 undergraduate software engineering students in multi-week coursework projects in 2014. Findings During this study, students performed close to 170,000 software engineering activities logged by HASE. By analysing the collected activity trajectory data set, the authors demonstrate the potential for this new research direction to enable software engineering educators to have a quantifiable way of understanding their students’ skill development, and take a proactive approach in helping them improve their programming and soft skills. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has yet to be published previous studies using software engineering activity data to assess software engineers’ skills.

Evaluation of a process for architectural assumption management in software development

• An architectural assumption management process with guidelines is developed. • Two case studies were conducted to validate the process. • The process can help to make architectural assumptions explicit. • The process can help to identify and reduce invalid architectural assumptions. Architectural assumption management is critical to the success of software development projects. In this paper, we propose an Architectural Assumption Management (AAM) process, comprised of four AAM activities: Architectural Assumption Making, Description, Evaluation, and Maintenance. Evaluating the AAM process in architectural assumption management, regarding the ease of understanding and the effort of conducting the AAM process, as well as the effectiveness of using the AAM process to make architectural assumptions explicit and to identify and reduce invalid architectural assumptions. An explanatory study with 88 first-year master students in software engineering, and an exploratory study with five practitioners from five companies. (1) the ease of understanding the AAM process is moderate for first-year master students but easy for practitioners; (2) the effort of conducting the AAM process is moderate for first-year master students; (3) Making and Evaluation took the students more time than Description and Maintenance; (4) the practitioners considered Evaluation as the most time consuming activity; (5) the AAM process can help to make architectural assumptions explicit and to identify and reduce invalid architectural assumptions in projects. The majority of the students and practitioners agreed that Architectural Assumption Evaluation is the most helpful activity for all these three aspects. For other activities, there are different opinions about their helpfulness; and (6) there are various factors identified that can impact the aforementioned results. Being aware of and properly adjusting these factors can facilitate the application of the AAM process in projects. The AAM process aims at systematically managing architectural assumptions in software development. The results of the case studies provide preliminary empirical evidence for the evaluation of the AAM process.

The Effects of Dynamic Criteria Mapping Assessment on Students’ Conceptions and Writing Skills Development

Learner center assessment procedure and application is very crucial for students writing skills improvement. Hence, this study aimed to explore the effects of dynamic criteria mapping assessment on students’ conceptions and writing skills development with reference to Vygotsky, zone of proximity development. To examine the issues, time series, quasi experimental research design was employed. The major data gathering tools were pre and post-tests, questionnaire and focus group discussion. Multistage sampling technique was employed to choose the sample of the study, and 63 first year software engineering students were the subjects of the study. Among these participants, 32 students were assigned to experimental group and the other 31 students’ were assigned to control group. The findings indicated that dynamic criteria mapping assessment was effective in improving students writing skills development; students were able to construct sentence with better text structure and arguments. Furthermore, they used various cohesive devices, appropriate punctuation marks and dictions in their writing. Moreover, the assessment techniques had changed their conceptions on learning writing skills and engagment in writing assessment. Generally, the researcher learned that dynamic criteria mapping assessment strategy was vital to enhance students writing skills and conceptions on learning writing skills. Lastly, it is recommended that teachers should prepare various and dynamic criteria with their respective students while they assess their students writing skills, and teachers should not use judgmental assessment techniques.

Visualizing composition and behavior of the ISO/IEC 33000 assessment framework through a multi-layer model

Software Process Improvement (SPI) models are a very important topic for SPI practitioners and software engineering students hence is required to improve comprehension about process assessment models. This paper proposes a visual tracking of the ISO/IEC 33000 Assessment Framework through a multi-layered representational model describing the standard in a highly practical way via structural and behavioral views and graphical reporting. This kind of representation comprises several semantic layers according to model dimensions and including, besides an additional dimension for specifying measurements. The structural elements of the model are assigned on distinct layers and connected among them with connectors of dependence and co-occurrence when applying the Assessment Model to software processes. The representation model was tested by software developers, academic experts and software students.

The Adoption of Agile Software Methodology with Team Software Process (TSPI) Practices in the Software Engineering Undergraduate Course


 
 
 In computer science, software engineering courses expose the undergraduate students to both the technical and methodological aspects of software development. The traditional software development methods and techniques represent a huge proportion of the courses and hence contribute an essential part of software engineering students’ development process. This plan-driven development is dependent on a set of predefined phases and ongoing documentation which found to be problematic; such as time-consuming, slipped requirements and complicated processes. The main aim of this paper is to study and review the adoption of Agile Software Methodology and Team Software Process (TSPi) practices in the undergraduate course focus on software development. The framework and course plan will be designed to apply and observe the implementation. Furthermore, this study will help to gather the teams’ viewpoint regarding the importance of Agile and TSPi practices in handling small projects with real clients.
 
 

Teaching UML and OCL models and their validation to software engineering students: an experience report

ABSTRACTModels are expanding their use for many different purposes in the field of software engineering and, due to their importance, universities have started incorporating modeling courses into their programs. Being a relatively new discipline, teaching modeling concepts brings in new challenges. Our contribution in this paper is threefold. First, we list and describe the main issues we have come across when teaching modeling in a dedicated Software Engineering course. We then present a simple case study that we have developed and successfully used in class, which permits students specify a system and its views, simulate them, check their relations, and perform several kinds of analyses on the overall system specifications. For this, we use a combination of UML and OCL. Finally, we report on the results of a survey we conducted among the students of the last two years to evaluate our proposal, and the lessons we have learned.

Exploring Collaborative Writing of User Stories With Multimodal Learning Analytics: A Case Study on a Software Engineering Course

Software engineering is the application of principles used in engineering design, development, testing, deployment, and management of software systems. One of the software engineering’s approaches, highly used in new industries, is agile development. User stories are a commonly used notation to capture user requirements in agile development. Nevertheless, for the elaboration of user stories, a high level of collaboration with the client is necessary. This professional skill is rarely measured or evaluated in educational contexts. The present work approaches collaboration in software engineering students through multimodal learning analytics, modeling, and evaluating students’ collaboration while they are writing user stories. For that, we used multidirectional microphones in order to derive social network analysis metrics related to collaboration (permanence and prompting) together with human-annotated information (quality of the stories and productivity). Results show that groups with a lower productivity in writing user stories and less professional experience in managing software requirements present a non-collaborative behavior more frequently, and that teams with a fewer number of interventions are more likely to produce a greater number of user stories. Moreover, although low experience subjects produced more user stories, a greater productivity of the most experienced subjects was not statistically verified. We believe that these types of initiatives will allow the measurement and early development of such skills in university students.

Agile Architecture in Action (AGATA)

Introduction: This work proposes Agile Architecture in Action (AGATA), a software process framework that scales Agile methods to larger teams. Methodology following a human interface model, several Extreme Programming (XP) development teams work together around a central team that takes advantage of the ability of architectural methods to define the solution at the architectural level, improving communication and maintaining Agile parameters. Results: AGATA was applied in a development project, involving software engineers and final year software engineering students, organized as a postgraduate practical course. In this case study we measured communication based in the architecture and face-to-face channels, taking into account the degree of distortion and quality of the channels. The main results show that communication levels in the whole team are reasonable and that the channels proposed by AGATA maintain Agile parameters as to intergroup relationship and client deliveries. There are reports indicating scaling problems as teams grow; particularly, communication worsens. Conclusion: It is necessary to propose clear channels of communication. AGATA practices managed to maintain Agile elements with a large team.

Adding practical experience to computer security course

AbstractComputer security has become one of the core areas according to IEEE Computer Society and ACM Joint Task Force curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in computer engineering and software engineering. At the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering there is a course called Computer Security that is taught to software engineering and computer engineering students for the past 9 years. During this time a significant change was made to the course regarding the level of practical students’ work. Several factors initiated the change: the recommendations in the curriculum guidelines, the analysis of the students’ success at the exams, and the students’ opinion. The impact of gradual transition from no practical activities at all to laboratory exercises and practical project at the course are described in this paper. Results show that the introduction of laboratory exercises at the course helped students to better understand some of the core areas and that the introduction of practical project increased their overall knowledge in the computer security area.

Universality of Egoless Behavior of Software Engineering Students

Software organizations have relied on process and technology initiatives to compete in a highly globalized world. Unfortunately, that has led to little or no success. The authors propose that the organizations start working on people initiatives, such as inspiring egoless behavior among software developers. This paper proposes a multi-stage approach to encourage egoless behavior and discusses the universality of the egoless behavior by studying cohorts from three different countries, i.e., Japan, India, and Canada. The three stages in the approach are self-assessment, peer validation, and action plan development. The instrument to assess egoless behavior is based on Lamont Adams' “Ten commandments of egoless programming” – seven of the commandments are general, whereas three are related to coding behavior. The authors have found that students display relatively poorer egoless behavior in coding related than general commandments. The authors found traces of universality in the egoless behavior among the three cohorts.

Socio-Cultural Challenges in Global Software Engineering Education

Global software engineering education (GSEE) is aimed at providing software engineering (SE) students with knowledge, skills, and understanding of working in globally distributed arrangements so they can be prepared for the global SE (GSE) paradigm. It is important to understand the challenges involved in GSEE for improving the quality and experience of educators and students. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study on the socio-cultural aspects of GSEE. A case study was conducted involving 14 participants from ten different universities in eight countries. The data was analyzed using grounded theory’s open coding procedure. The key contributions of this paper are the identification and description of seven dimensions of socio-cultural distance that caused several significant challenges in the courses: 1) language differences; 2) concept of time; 3) attitude toward grades; 4) assumptions about national culture; 5) differences in autonomy; 6) influence of the course lecturer; and 7) work habits. Recommendations from this paper that are expected to benefit GSEE educators and students include: cross-cultural orientation of students prior to the course; use of various strategies to support better comprehension of different English accents (e.g., speaking slowly, replaying recorded video messages, and text chatting); and educators familiarizing themselves and their students with the relevant GSE and GSEE literature.

Development and delivery of an interdisciplinary course in mobile health (mHealth)

BackgroundInterdisciplinary practice is a primary focus within the United States health care system. Despite the existence of interdisciplinary educational efforts in pharmacy for many years, the practice only recently entered mainstream health care education. Informatics offers interdisciplinary educational opportunities. Mobile health (mHealth), an informatics sub-discipline, is the use of mobile devices for health and wellness activities. We used the mHealth domain as the context for an interdisciplinary learning experience for pharmacy and computer science and software engineering (CSSE) students. Educational activityEducational activities focused on creating an mHealth course sequence and an mHealth application (app). Students worked in teams to complete various assignments, including developing and presenting a course proposal, building a purchase plan for mHealth equipment, developing an mHealth app prototype, delivering a disease state presentation (pharmacy students only), developing use case scenarios (CSSE students only), and completing peer evaluations. Critical analysis of the educational activityCourse evaluations were only available from pharmacy students. They indicated an overall favorable rating (mean 3.27–3.55; 4=strongly agree). Survey data collected after students entered the workforce indicated that students felt better prepared than their colleagues to work with individuals from other disciplines (mean 4.82; 5=strongly agree). Students also indicated using the knowledge from course proposal development in their careers (mean 4.27; 5=strongly agree). Through team interactions, students learned from each other while overcoming challenges related to terminology and content areas. Skills learned through team interactions reflect real-world processes and are expected to support students’ future professional responsibilities.

Effect of Media Synchronization Module on Learning Achievement of the Software Engineering Students of Vocational High School

This research aims at examining the effect of media synchronization module, mechanical aptitude, and prior knowledge on learning achievement of eleven grade students of the Software Engineering (RekayasaPerangkatLunak/RPL) Programin Vocational High School 5 at Malang, East Java, Indonesia. This quasi-experimental research used factorial design of 2x2x2 pattern and applied the non-equivalent control group design. It involved 74 students who were divided into two groups; 37 students were in the experimental group and 37 students were in the control group. Tests were used to investigate the students’ mechanical aptitude, prior knowledge and learning achievement. Data were analyzed by using three-way ANOVA. The results of the research showed that: 1) There was a significant difference in the learning achievement of the group taught by using media synchronization module and those who were taught by using the conventional method; 2) there was no significant difference in the learning achievement in the C++ Programming between students who had high and low mechanical aptitude; 3) there was a significant difference in the learning achievement in C++ Programming between students who had high and low prior knowledge; and 4) there was no significant interaction among media synchronization module, mechanical aptitude, and prior knowledge on the learning achievement with C++ Programming.

Evaluación de la Técnica de Visualización Basada en Grafos: Un Experimento Controlado

Muchos investigadores han señalado la falta de estudios empíricos que sistemáticamente examinen las ventajas y desventajas del uso de técnicas de visualización para soportar la comprensión del software. Estos estudios son indispensables para recolectar y analizar evidencia objetiva y cuantificable acerca de la utilidad de las técnicas de visualización y herramientas propuestas, y más aún, para servir como guía de la investigación en visualización de software. En este estudio, 6 tareas típicas de comprensión de software fueron realizadas por 20 estudiantes de un curso de ingeniería de software. Se midió el tiempo de respuesta y se calificó la exactitud en las respuestas de los participantes. Los resultados indican que, por una parte, el uso de la técnica de visualización basada en grafos mejoró la exactitud en las respuestas de los estudiantes (21.45% en promedio); por otra parte, no se encontró evidencia significativa de reducción en el tiempo gastado por los estudiantes para resolver las tareas de comprensión de software.

THIRD-YEAR INTEGRATIVE PROJECTS FOR COMPUTER AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING STUDENTS AT POLYTECHNIQUE MONTRÉAL

This paper presents the most important aspects of the third-year project for students in computer and software engineering at Polytechnique Montréal. In computer engineering, the third-year project mainly focusses on FPGA-based embedded systems, mobile application development (Android application), network communication and protocols, and user interface design. In software engineering, the third-year project mainly focusses on software reengineering (of the second-year project), mobile application development (iPad application), network communication and protocols, and user interface design. The important role of team and project management is also underlined. Teachers’ evaluation of students, as well as students’ evaluation of teachers are discussed.

Student developed computer science educational tools as software engineering course projects

In a one semester course on software engineering for upper level computer science students, students typically learn the fundamental software processes spanning the software development lifecycle --- from requirements specification through architectural design, implementation, testing, and evolution, along with the software tools that support the development activities. Courses in software engineering often incorporate semester long team projects, where students collaborate on a software development project. Thus, in addition to developing the technical skills associated with software development, the software engineering course is a common place where computer science students develop their skills in teamwork and collaboration, as well as in communications. The nature and type of projects in such courses varies. Some integrate projects where students develop software for clients such as on campus departments, or local non-profits, while others have been increasing exposure to open source development with students contributing to existing open source projects. In our software engineering course, we have recently introduced course projects where teams of students specify, design, and implement software that assists computer science students in learning fundamental computer science topics. In this paper, we present our experience with such CS learning tool projects, including a discussion of the impact on student outcomes in a senior-level course on software engineering. We compare this experience to our prior use of projects for real clients in this same course. We find that students who participate in the CS learning tool projects perceive an increase in learning progress on fundamental principles, theories, and factual knowledge, as compared to their peers in course sections with projects for real clients, with an equivalent effect on teamwork and collaboration skills. Most surprisingly, the students who develop CS learning tools report a significantly higher level of progress on industrial relevant skill development as compared to the students who develop so called projects for real clients.

Preparing Tomorrow's Software Engineers for Work in a Global Environment

Global software engineering (GSE) is becoming common. It's thus important to educate university software engineering students in GSE. The authors discuss challenges to and recommendations for implementing such instruction.

An experimental replication on the effect of the practice of mindfulness in conceptual modeling performance

Context: Mindfulness is a meditation technique aimed to increase clearness of mind and awareness. In the 2013–2014 academic year, an experiment was carried out to test whether the practice of mindfulness during 4 weeks improved or not the conceptual modeling performance using UML class diagrams of 32 second–year students of Software Engineering at the University of Seville. Objective: An internal replication with some changes in the original design was performed in the first semester of the 2014–2015 academic year in order to confirm the insights provided by the original study and increase the confidence in its conclusions. The sample were 53 students with the same profile than in the original study. Method: Half the students (27 subjects) practiced mindfulness during 6 weeks, while the other half (26 subjects), i.e. the control group, received no treatment during that time. All the students developed two conceptual models using UML class diagrams from a transcript of an interview, one before and another after the 6 weeks of mindfulness sessions, and the results were compared in terms of conceptual modeling effectiveness and efficiency. Results: The results of both experiments were similar, showing that the practice of mindfulness significantly improves conceptual modeling efficiency. Regarding conceptual modeling effectiveness, an improvement is observed in practice, but the analysis shows that such improvement is not statistically significant. After a reanalysis of data, consistent results have also been obtained. Conclusion: After a replication that leads to the same conclusions as the original study, the adequacy of the original experiment is confirmed and the credibility of its results is increased. Thus, we can state that the practice of mindfulness can improve the efficiency of Software Engineering students in the development of conceptual models, although further experimentation is needed in order to confirm the results in other contexts and other Software Engineering activities different from conceptual modeling.

Perceived Supports and Barriers for Career Development for Second‐Year STEM Students

AbstractBackgroundThis study was designed to determine the effect of perceived supports and barriers on self‐efficacy beliefs and other social‐cognitive variables related to second‐year science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students' career development. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) states that career interest is influenced by four cognitive‐person variables: self‐efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, interests, and goals. Other variables, such as social supports and barriers, also play an important role.PurposeThis study explores the influence of gender and STEM major on perceived supports and barriers. It also analyzes the effects of perceived supports and barriers on the SCCT cognitive‐person variables.MethodParticipants were 811 sophomore students in STEM programs at the University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. Kruskal‐Wallis and Mann‐Whitney U tests analyzed the difference in the perceived supports and barriers by gender and students' major. Multiple‐group structural equation modeling was implemented to predict the relationship between perceived supports and barriers and SCCT cognitive‐person variables.ResultsThe engineering students perceived more teaching staff barriers and fewer teaching staff supports than other students. Male software and hardware engineering students perceived more barriers than other male engineering students. The fit of the model revealed an important effect of perceived teaching staff supports on the four cognitive‐person variables.ConclusionsTo determine the influences on the cognitive‐person variables, it is necessary to analyze the perceived supports and barriers. Peers and family are the most important perceived supports, while teaching staff and financial difficulties are the greatest perceived barriers.

Professional identity construction among software engineering students

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the process in which the software engineering students construct their professional identities.Design/methodology/approach– The study followed the qualitative method using grounded theory methodology to examine the process of identity construction. Data were collected from final year software engineering students in an iterative manner.Findings– Based on the present study, the study argues that entry-level identities of students are modified and adjusted in response to their experience of identity violations over the course of their academic program. These violations were caused by their unmet expectations from the academic program. The magnitude of these violations is influenced by their perceived value derived from the training they were receiving.Research limitations/implications– This paper explains the process of “identity morphing” as a mechanism by which students resolve the conflict/violation of their identities. The emergence and adaptation of different types of identities were examined. This study can be extended to the employees of IT organizations to draw a holistic picture.Practical implications– The understanding of identity morphing process might enable organizations to enrich their interaction with their employees and thus provide avenues to improve their work-related outcomes.Originality/value– Previous studies have explored professional identity construction among individuals. However, how software professionals construct their professional identity, during their education years, is relatively unexplored. The present study asserts that professional identities are formed among the students even before they join the organization.