Software Engineering Students Research Articles

Model of Formation of Communicative Competences of Students-Programmers in the Process of Joint Activity

Effective professional activity in the digital era is based on the ability to make decisions, willingness to cooperate and skills to manage emotional intelligence. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the training of IT-specialists and create conditions for the formation of their communicative competences. The purpose of the article is to discuss the results of the development of the model of the process of forming communicative competences of software engineering students in collaborative activities. The research methodology includes competence-based, constructivist, network approach, personality-oriented approach and activity-based approaches. The method of pedagogical modeling was used, which allowed to correlate the existing and ideal characteristics of the educational process under study, to identify and outline ways to improve it in the context of professional activity in the IT-sphere. The development of the model was carried out taking into account the technology of “blended learning”. Research results. The model of the process of formation of communicative competence of students-programmers includes the target block, in which the personal goals of education, the standard of specialty 09.02.07 “Information Systems and Programming”, the requirements of employers to the professional activity of programmers are indicated; the organizational-activity block, including diagnostic and activity-forming activities; the result-criterial block, including criteria and indicators of assessment of communicative competence. Conclusion. Communicative competences of students-programmers include knowledge of psychological bases of communication and possession of virtual communication skills, active participation in teamwork, skills of constructive interaction, organizational skills, readiness for interaction, orientation to self-improvement in interaction, self-motivation skills, self-regulation skills, self-control, conflict resolution. The process of formation of communicative competences of students-programmers is carried out in the educational activity on the basis of learning in cooperation as a type of joint activity, providing students’ motivation for constructive interaction, increasing the performance of academic tasks, individual responsibility, eliminating the barriers of interaction through the use of flexible planning strategy and organization of virtual teamwork based on the principles of Agile-methodology and Scrum-method.

Academic Freedom and International Students, Part 5: The gray areas

Computer science and software engineering students and researchers are busy with their courses, in their labs, working on their studies and research - for the most part not really thinking about the impact of politics on their research. However, there are increasing restrictions on the information researchers are allowed to share with their students, and who researchers are allowed to collaborate with respect to national security and increasing concerns with China. To an increasing extent researchers are made aware at grant time. Research institutions must follow federal rules in the grant and hiring process and are conducting workshops and roundtables on issues of national security. The AIP, The American Institute of Physics provides through their mailing list an informative brief on national science policy titled "FYI: Science Policy News from AIP, This Week." The issue for January 23, 2023, invited those interested to join a National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine workshop called a "Meeting of experts," on the topic of "Fundamental Research, Openness, and Protecting the U.S. Technological Advantage: NSDD-189 in the New Global Context."

Improving Software Engineering Students’ Creative Thinking and Motivation Using Practical Prototyping and Innovation Techniques

Traditionally university students lack motivation in subjects that are more focused on documentation and theory. This problem only deepens with each new generation. A practical workshop approach has been implemented in the subject “Analysing system requirements and specifications”. Its place in the curriculum is explained. A technique for developing innovation and prototypes, used by Google for motivation is described. The method of its’ implementation is thoroughly documented. A brief experiment in the form of a workshop is described and the gathered data is analysed. A survey on student feedback is conducted and the results are discussed. Influence on student soft skills improvement is evaluated. An observation on using the methodology as an introductory workshop to break the ice with engineering students is made. The conclusions made based on the feedback data and discussions with students show that the methodology is successful and student motivation and attendance is increased.

Criminal expertise and hacking efficiency

Criminal expertise plays a crucial role in the choices offenders make when committing a crime, including their modus operandi. However, our knowledge about criminal decision making online remains limited. Drawing on insights from cyber security, we conceptualize the cybercrime commission process as the sequence of phases of the cyber kill chain that offenders go through. We assume that offenders who follow the sequence consecutively use the most efficient hacking method. Building upon the expertise paradigm, we hypothesize that participants with greater hacking experience and IT skills undertake more efficient hacks. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed data from 69 computer security and software engineering students who were invited to hack a vulnerable website in a computer lab equipped with monitoring software, which allowed to collect objective behavioral measures. Additionally, we collected individual measures regarding hacking expertise through an online questionnaire. After quantitatively measuring efficiency using sequence analysis, a regression model showed that the expertise paradigm may also apply to hackers. We discuss the implications of our novel research for the study of offender decision-making processes more broadly.

Development of Reciprocal Teaching-Based Interactive Multimedia to Enhance Students' Learning Outcomes of Database Fundamentals

Database subjects are one of the basic compulsory subjects for the Computer Engineering and Informatics program. For Software Engineering students, topics such as Data Definition Language (DDL) and Data Manipulation Language (DML) are crucial for understanding advanced lessons. However, learning outcomes have been low due to factors such as suboptimal media, methods, models, and teaching processes. This research aims to design reciprocal teaching-based interactive multimedia to enhance student learning outcomes in DDL and DML materials. The research method used is adapted from the Comprehensive Life Cycle model, with a sample of students from class X-RPL-1 at Bina Wisata Lembang Vocational High School.The results of this study are as follows: 1) An average percentage of 80% was obtained from media experts and 80% from subject matter experts, both categorized as “Very Good”. 2) The use of multimedia improved student learning outcomes, demonstrated by an average score increase from 34 to 73. Furthermore, based on the pretest and posttest results, an average normalized gain (n-gain) of 0.59 was obtained with a criteria of 'Moderate' effectiveness. 3) Students responses to the created multimedia resulted in an average percentage score of 86.41%, categorized as “Very Good”.

Exploring Gender Bias In Remote Pair Programming Among Software Engineering Students: The twincode Original Study And First External Replication

ContextWomen have historically been underrepresented in Software Engineering, due in part to the stereotyped assumption that women are less technically competent than men. Pair programming is both widely used in industry and has been shown to increase student interest in Software Engineering, particularly among women; but if those same gender biases are also present in pair programming, its potential for attracting women to the field could be thwarted.ObjectiveWe aim to explore the effects of gender bias in pair programming. Specifically, in a remote setting in which students cannot directly observe the gender of their peers, we study whether the perception of the partner, the behavior during programming, or the style of communication of Software Engineering students differ depending on the perceived gender of their remote partner. To our knowledge, this is the first study specifically focusing on the impact of gender stereotypes and bias within pairs in pair programming.MethodWe have developed an online pair-programming platform (twincode) that provides a collaborative editing window and a chat pane, both of which are heavily instrumented. Students in the control group had no information about their partner’s gender, whereas students in the treatment group could see a gendered avatar representing the other participant as a man or as a woman. The gender of the avatar was swapped between programming tasks to analyze 45 variables related to the collaborative coding behavior, chat utterances, and questionnaire responses of 46 pairs in the original study at the University of Seville, and 23 pairs in the external replication at the University of California, Berkeley.ResultsWe did not observe any statistically significant effect of the gender bias treatment, nor any interaction between the perceived partner’s gender and subject’s gender, in any of the 45 response variables measured in the original study. In the external replication, we observed statistically significant effects with moderate to large sizes in four dependent variables within the experimental group, comparing how subjects acted when their partners were represented as a man or a woman.ConclusionsThe results in the original study do not show any clear effect of the treatment in remote pair programming among current Software Engineering students. In the external replication, it seems that students delete more source code characters when they have a woman partner, and communicate using more informal utterances, reflections and yes/no questions when they have a man partner, although these results must be considered inconclusive because of the small number of subjects in the replication, and because when multiple test corrections are applied, only the result about informal utterances remains significant. In any case, more mixed methods replications are needed in order to confirm or refute the results in the same and other Software Engineering students populations.

Examining and Comparing the Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Serious Games and LEGO Serious Play for Learning Scrum

Significant research work has been undertaken related to the game-based learning approach over the last years. However, a closer look at this work reveals that further research is needed to examine some types of game-based learning approaches such as virtual reality serious games and LEGO Serious Play. This article examines and compares the effectiveness for learning Scrum and related agile practices of a serious game based on virtual reality and a learning activity based on the LEGO Serious Play methodology. The presented study used a quasi-experimental design with two groups, pre- and post-tests, and a perceptions questionnaire. The sample was composed of 59 software engineering students, 22 of which belonged to group A, while the other 37 were part of group B. The students in group A played the virtual reality serious game, whereas the students in group B conducted the LEGO Serious Play activity. The results show that both game-based learning approaches were effective for learning Scrum and related agile practices in terms of learning performance and motivation, but they also show that the students who played the virtual reality serious game outperformed their peers from the other group in terms of learning performance.

Software Engineering Students, Soft and Hard Skills Got through a University Software Company

Software Engineering Students, Soft and Hard Skills Got through a University Software Company

Exploring the Teaching Reform of Computer Software Engineering Specialized Courses in Colleges and Universities under the Background of New Engineering Sciences

Abstract The issue of teaching quality in colleges and universities has received widespread attention, and teaching reform using information technology has become a way to improve the quality of university teaching. In this paper, an improvement method is proposed that combines the CBE competency education assessment model and improved C-ADDIE to create a teaching reform model for software engineering courses. After quantitatively assessing students’ professional competence using the IAHP-BP model, students with different competencies are divided by clustering and grouping to analyze the professional competence of software engineering students in terms of the whole and specialty. The professional competence score of the reformed students is 82.103 for the A class students, and the worse performing B class students, the professional competence score is only 72.639, and the gap between the two classes is close to 10 points. After the education of competency assessment with the model proposed in this paper, the student’s professional performance was improved with 11 points in the high score band, and the number of low score bands was gradually reduced. The model developed by the research is a valuable resource for computer software engineering students.

The enduring impact of gamification on software engineering students’ engagement

The enduring impact of gamification on software engineering students’ engagement

Effectiveness of Video-based Training for Face-to-face Communication Skills of Software Engineers: Evidence from a Three-year Study

Objectives. Communication skills are crucial for effective software development teams, but those skills are difficult to teach. The goal of our project is to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching face-to-face communication skills using AVW-Space, a platform for video-based learning that provides personalized nudges to support student's engagement during video watching. Participants. The participants in our study are second-year software engineering students. The study was conducted over three years, with students enrolled in a semester-long project course. Study Method. We performed a quasi-experimental study over three years to teach face-to-face communication using AVW-Space, a video-based learning platform. We present the instance of AVW-Space we developed to teach face-to-face communication. Participants watched and commented on 10 videos and later commented on the recording of their own team meeting. In 2020, the participants ( n = 50) did not receive nudges, and we use the data collected that year as control. In 2021 ( n = 49) and 2022 ( n = 48), nudges were provided adaptively to encourage students to write more and higher-quality comments. Findings. The findings from the study show the effectiveness of nudges. We found significant differences in engagement when nudges were provided. Furthermore, there is a causal effect of nudges on the interaction time, the total number of comments written, and the number of high-quality comments, as well as on learning. Finally, participants exposed to nudges reported higher perceived learning. Conclusions. Our research shows the effect of nudges on student engagement and learning while using the instance of AVW-Space for teaching face-to-face communication skills. Future work will explore other soft skills, as well as providing explanations for the decisions made by AVW-Space.

Automated black-box boundary value detection

Software systems typically have an input domain that can be subdivided into sub-domains, each of which generates similar or related outputs. Testing it on the boundaries between these sub-domains is critical to ensure high-quality software. Therefore, boundary value analysis and testing have been a fundamental part of the software testing toolbox for a long time and are typically taught early to software engineering students. Despite its many argued benefits, boundary value analysis for a given software specification or application is typically described in abstract terms. This allows for variation in how testers apply it and in the benefits they see. Additionally, its adoption has been limited since it requires a specification or model to be analysed. We propose an automated black-box boundary value detection method to support software testers in performing systematic boundary value analysis. This dynamic method can be utilized even without a specification or model. The proposed method is based on a metric referred to as the program derivative, which quantifies the level of boundariness of test inputs. By combining this metric with search algorithms, we can identify and rank pairs of inputs as good boundary candidates, i.e., inputs that are in close proximity to each other but with outputs that are far apart. We have implemented the AutoBVA approach and evaluated it on a curated dataset of example programs. Furthermore, we have applied the approach broadly to a sample of 613 functions from the base library of the Julia programming language. The approach could identify boundary candidates that highlight diverse boundary behaviours in over 70% of investigated systems under test. The results demonstrate that even a simple variant of the program derivative, combined with broad sampling and search over the input space, can identify interesting boundary candidates for a significant portion of the functions under investigation. In conclusion, we also discuss the future extension of the approach to encompass more complex systems under test cases and datatypes.

SQMetrics: An Educational Software Quality Assessment Tool for Java

Over the years, various software quality measurement models have been proposed and used in academia and the software industry to assess the quality of produced code and to obtain guidelines for its improvement. In this article, we describe the design and functionality of SQMetrics, a tool for calculating object-oriented quality metrics for projects written in Java. SQMetrics provides the convenience of measuring small code, mainly covering academic or research needs. In this context, the application can be used by students of software engineering courses to make measurements and comparisons in their projects and gradually increase their quality by improving the calculated metrics. Teachers, on the other hand, can use SQMetrics to evaluate students’ Java projects and grade them in proportion to their quality. The contribution of the proposed tool is three-fold, as it has been: (a) tested for its completeness and functionality by comparing it with widely known similar tools, (b) evaluated for its usability and value as a learning aid by students, and (c) statistically tested for its value as a teachers’ aid assisting in the evaluation of student projects. Our findings verify SQMetrics’ effectiveness in helping software engineering students learn critical concepts and improve the quality of their code, as well as in helping teachers assess the quality of students’ Java projects and make more informed grading decisions.

The impact of unequal contributions in student software engineering team projects

Unequal distribution of work is a common problem in student team projects, undermining learning objectives and reducing student satisfaction with teamwork. More is needed to be known about the impact of unequal distribution of work on the performance of student software engineering teams and their members and the relationship between objective measures of unequal contribution and team-perceived unequal contribution. A greater understanding of these issues allows for targeted and personalised responses to these behaviours. We investigated several aspects of unequal contribution in student software engineering teams. We measured inequality of contribution using Git data from student software engineering teams, source code quality using code analyser SonarQube, and the team performance using grades. According to our results, most students under-contributed to their teams, and at least half the teams in each assignment had low equality of contribution or extreme inequality of contribution. Individual contribution styles did not strongly persist between modules (one-semester-long software engineering courses). There were no consistent associations between inequality of contribution in the student teams and performance or code quality. When the contribution of the least active team member was less than 14% of their fair share, teams were likely to perceive an unequal distribution of contributions.

Learning and Motivational Impact of Using a Virtual Reality Serious Video Game to Learn Scrum

Today, there is a great variety of learning techniques and methodologies: traditional lectures, role-plays, group dynamics, project-based learning, simulations, educational games, and so on. Regarding technology-enhanced learning, the educational usage of Virtual Reality is innovative and the initiatives carried out suggest that this technology is an appealing medium for young people that facilitates an active and effective teaching. On the other hand, agile methodologies are widely spread across the IT industry and it is necessary to look for the best techniques to learn them in the most appropriate way. This contribution presents a Virtual Reality serious video game, named ScrumVR, which aims to teach the key aspects of the most widespread agile methodology for software development: Scrum. To do so, this video game tries to gets players closer to their first weeks of work within a Scrum team. The empirical results, gathered through a case study conducted with 78 software engineering students and supported by instruments such as pre-post tests and questionnaires, indicate that ScrumVR facilitates the learning of the roles, meetings, artifacts, and practices employed in Scrum, and contributes to enhance student's motivation and the whole learning experience.

Students' Learning Behaviour in Programming Education Analysis: Insights from Entropy and Community Detection.

The high dropout rates in programming courses emphasise the need for monitoring and understanding student engagement, enabling early interventions. This activity can be supported by insights into students' learning behaviours and their relationship with academic performance, derived from student learning log data in learning management systems. However, the high dimensionality of such data, along with their numerous features, pose challenges to their analysis and interpretability. In this study, we introduce entropy-based metrics as a novel manner to represent students' learning behaviours. Employing these metrics, in conjunction with a proven community detection method, we undertake an analysis of learning behaviours across higher- and lower-performing student communities. Furthermore, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these behaviours. The study is grounded in the analysis of empirical data from 391 Software Engineering students over three academic years. Our findings reveal that students in higher-performing communities typically tend to have lower volatility in entropy values and reach stable learning states earlier than their lower-performing counterparts. Importantly, this study provides evidence of the use of entropy as a simple yet insightful metric for educators to monitor study progress, enhance understanding of student engagement, and enable timely interventions.

Affordances and agency in students’ use of online platforms and resources beyond curricular boundaries

ABSTRACT This study explored how agency is expressed when undergraduate students cross curricular boundaries to learn software development by realising affordances enabled by resources on online platforms. The study employed a qualitative research design based on individual stimulated recall interviews with 27 computer and software engineering students. The hybrid thematic analysis employed an ecological framework in which the actions the students performed during software development tasks were interpreted in relational terms. The results reveal multiple interrelated affordances that were realised as the students learnt by using various resources on different online platforms. Agency was expressed primarily through students pursuing specific objectives related to their learning across platforms and curricular boundaries and was shared and distributed across people and the environment. The findings highlight the idea that boundaries are formed and crossed based on how people experience the environment, which, in turn, is enabled or constrained by the resources used.

Element quality indicator: A quality assessment and defect detection method for software requirement specification

A software requirements specification (SRS) provides a detailed description of the requirements of a software system that is to be developed. The Element Quality Indicator (EQI) is a novel method to detect defects and assess the quality of an SRS. It does not hinge on review guidelines and is based on the SRS element questions extraction method (EQEM). In this study, we optimized the EQI and carried out a systematic and comprehensive experiment to validate and evaluate its effectiveness. The controlled experiment, which included 60 software engineering students, found that 100% of the subjects identified defects in the SRS using EQI. Moreover, the results indicated that the average number of defects detected with EQI was greater than that of the classical review technique - perspective-based reading. Furthermore, the controlled experiment demonstrated that EQI provides a comparatively objective and accurate evaluation of the quality of the SRS and markedly diminishes the bias in understanding software requirements due to the ambiguity of natural language.

USQA: A User Story Quality Analyzer prototype for supporting software engineering students

AbstractThe Standish Group Reports 83.9% of IT Projects fail, and one of the top factors in failed projects is the incomplete requirements or user stories. Therefore, it is essential to teach undergraduate students from computer science degree programs how to create complete user stories. Computer science programs include some subjects or topics involving requirements or user stories collection and writing, such as Requirements Engineering, Software Engineering, Project Management, or Quality Software Assurance. For that reason, we designed a web application called User Story Quality Analyzer (USQA) that uses Natural Language Processing modules to detect errors regarding aspects of usefulness, completeness, and polysemes in the user stories creation. The tool was proved from three perspectives: (1) a reliability test, where 35 user stories developed by experts were tested in the app to prove the prototype's reliability; (2) usability and utility analysis; 48 students interacted with the tool and responded a Satisfaction Usability Scale and an open‐ended question, the students reported a high usability score; (3) finally, error classification, we gathered 159 user stories processed by the system, and we classified the students' common errors considering incompleteness and polysemes. After the evaluations, we concluded that USQA could evaluate the user stories as an expert, which could help the professors/teachers/instructors in their courses by providing feedback to the students when they are writing user stories.

Can gamification help in software testing education? Findings from an empirical study

Software testing is an essential knowledge area required by industry for software engineers. However, software engineering students often consider testing less appealing than designing or coding. Consequently, it is difficult to engage students to create effective tests. To encourage students, we explored the use of gamification and investigated whether this technique can help to improve the engagement and performance of software testing students. We conducted a controlled experiment to compare the engagement and performance of two groups of students that took an undergraduate software testing course in different academic years. The experimental group is formed by 135 students from the gamified course whereas the control group is formed by 100 students from the non-gamified course. The data collected were statistically analyzed to answer the research questions of this study. The results show that the students that participated in the gamification experience were more engaged and achieved a better performance. As an additional finding, the analysis of the results reveals that a key aspect to succeed is the gamification experience design. It is important to distribute the motivating stimulus provided by the gamification throughout the whole experience to engage students until the end. Given these results, we plan to readjust the gamification experience design to increase student engagement in the last stage of the experience, as well as to conduct a longitudinal study to evaluate the effects of gamification.