Industry Projects in Requirements Engineering Education: Application in a University Course in the US and Comparison with Germany

Project-based learning has proven useful in software engineering education to increase student engagement and learning performance. In this paper, we contribute our experiences from applying industry projects in an undergraduate requirements engineering course in the United States. We furthermore discuss our experiences from courses conducted in Germany and the US course in light of difference in the educational systems. Results show that our course design is well received in both countries in terms of learning outcomes, student motivation, teamwork, attention to detail, and performance in the exam

Automized Assessment for Professional Skills – A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Avenues

Globalization, technological progress, and demographic trends in-creasingly influence our labor markets. With changing labor markets and increas-ing digitalization, new competencies of workers are needed to meet demands. However, as a first step to developing these new skills, knowledge about the ex-isting skills and their status quo is necessary. Here, automated skill assessment offers a crucial added value, as it can create a reliable and objective database. Based on a systematic investigation, our analysis shows, in four different areas, how skills and competencies in the automated assessment are (1) defined, (2) included as an element of analysis, (3) methodically recorded and processed, (4) which data source is used. In doing so, we offer insights into existing approaches to automated assessment of professional skills. In doing so, we contribute to a better understanding of the design of automated skill assessment methods and provide perspectives on future research directions

Software Test Case Generation Tools and Techniques: A Review

Software Industry is evolving at a very fast pace since last two decades. Many software developments, testing and test case generation approaches have evolved in last two decades to deliver quality products and services. Testing plays a vital role to ensure the quality and reliability of software products. In this paper authors attempted to conduct a systematic study of testing tools and techniques. Six most popular e-resources called IEEE, Springer, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Elsevier, Wiley and Google Scholar to download 738 manuscripts out of which 125 were selected to conduct the study. Out of 125 manuscripts selected, a good number approx. 79% are from reputed journals and around 21% are from good conference of repute. Testing tools discussed in this paper have broadly been divided into five different categories: open source, academic and research, commercial, academic and open source, and commercial & open source. The paper also discusses several benchmarked datasets viz. Evosuite 10, SF100 Corpus, Defects4J repository, Neo4j, JSON, Mocha JS, and Node JS to name a few. Aim of this paper is to make the researchers aware of the various test case generation tools and techniques introduced in the last 11 years with their salient features

A Closer Look into Recent Video-based Learning Research: A Comprehensive Review of Video Characteristics, Tools, Technologies, and Learning Effectiveness

People increasingly use videos on the Web as a source for learning. To support this way of learning, researchers and developers are continuously developing tools, proposing guidelines, analyzing data, and conducting experiments. However, it is still not clear what characteristics a video should have to be an effective learning medium. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of 257 articles on video-based learning for the period from 2016 to 2021. One of the aims of the review is to identify the video characteristics that have been explored by previous work. Based on our analysis, we suggest a taxonomy which organizes the video characteristics and contextual aspects into eight categories: (1) audio features, (2) visual features, (3) textual features, (4) instructor behavior, (5) learners activities, (6) interactive features (quizzes, etc.), (7) production style, and (8) instructional design. Also, we identify four representative research directions: (1) proposals of tools to support video-based learning, (2) studies with controlled experiments, (3) data analysis studies, and (4) proposals of design guidelines for learning videos. We find that the most explored characteristics are textual features followed by visual features, learner activities, and interactive features. Text of transcripts, video frames, and images (figures and illustrations) are most frequently used by tools that support learning through videos. The learner activity is heavily explored through log files in data analysis studies, and interactive features have been frequently scrutinized in controlled experiments. We complement our review by contrasting research findings that investigate the impact of video characteristics on the learning effectiveness, report on tasks and technologies used to develop tools that support learning, and summarize trends of design guidelines to produce learning video

Rogue access point detection framework on a multivendor access point WLAN

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) at Strathmore UniversityWireless internet access has become common throughout the world. IEEE 802.11 Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) is now a common internet access standard almost becoming a requirement in homes, offices, universities and public places due to developments in Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD), mobile telephony and telecommuting. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi comes a number of information security challenges that have to be addressed. One of the major security threats that comes with Wi-Fi is the presence of rogue access points (APs) on the network. Unsuspecting employees in a company or attackers can introduce rogue APs to a secure wired network. The problem is amplified if the wireless local area network (WLAN) consist of multivendor APs. Malicious people can leverage on rogue APs to perform passive or active attacks on a computer network. Therefore, there is need for network administrators to accurately, with less effort, detect and control presence of rogue APs on multivendor WLANs. In this thesis, a solution that can accurately support detection of rogues APs on a multi-vendor AP WLAN without extra hardware or modification of AP firmware is presented. In the solution, information from beacon frames is compared to a set of approved parameters. Intervention of a network administrator is included to prevent MAC address spoofing. A structured methodology was adopted in developing the model on a Windows operating system. Python programming language was used in coding the system with Scapy and Tkinter as the main modules. SQLite database was used to store required data. The system was tested on a setup WLAN that composed of three different access points in a University lab. It was able to capture beacon frames sent by the access points and extracted MAC address, SSID and capability information as the key parameters used in identifying and classifying the access points. The system uses the captured information to automatically compare it against an existing database of authorized parameters. It is then able to classify an access point as either rogue or authorized. The system issued alerts that described the detected APs to a network administrator. The rest of this document gives details of scholarly works that are pertinent to the study, the research methodology used, implementation and testing of the model followed by discussions of findings and the conclusions and recommendations made by the researcher

A Human-Centric System for Symbolic Reasoning About Code

While testing and tracing on specific input values are useful starting points for students to understand program behavior, ultimately students need to be able to reason rigorously and logically about the correctness of their code on all inputs without having to run the code. Symbolic reasoning is reasoning abstractly about code using arbitrary symbolic input values, as opposed to specific concrete inputs. The overarching goal of this research is to help students learn symbolic reasoning, beginning with code containing simple assertions as a foundation and proceeding to code involving data abstractions and loop invariants. Toward achieving this goal, this research has employed multiple experiments across five years at three institutions: a large, public university, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution). A total of 862 students participated across all variations of the study. Interactive, online tools can enhance student learning because they can provide targeted help that would be prohibitively expensive without automation. The research experiments employ two such symbolic reasoning tools that had been developed earlier and a newly designed human-centric reasoning system (HCRS). The HCRS is a first step in building a generalized tutor that achieves a level of resolution necessary to identify difficulties and suggest appropriate interventions. The experiments show the value of tools in pinpointing and classifying difficulties in learning symbolic reasoning, as well as in learning design-by-contract assertions and applying them to develop loop invariants for code involving objects. Statistically significant results include the following. Students are able to learn symbolic reasoning with the aid of instruction and an online tool. Motivation improves student perception and attitude towards symbolic reasoning. Tool usage improves student performance on symbolic reasoning, their explanations of the larger purpose of code segments, and self-efficacy for all subpopulations

Ernst Denert Award for Software Engineering 2019

This open access book provides an overview of the dissertations of the five nominees for the Ernst Denert Award for Software Engineering in 2019. The prize, kindly sponsored by the Gerlind & Ernst Denert Stiftung, is awarded for excellent work within the discipline of Software Engineering, which includes methods, tools and procedures for better and efficient development of high quality software. An essential requirement for the nominated work is its applicability and usability in industrial practice. The book contains five papers describing the works by Sebastian Baltes (U Trier) on Software Developers’Work Habits and Expertise, Timo Greifenberg’s thesis on Artefaktbasierte Analyse modellgetriebener Softwareentwicklungsprojekte, Marco Konersmann’s (U Duisburg-Essen) work on Explicitly Integrated Architecture, Marija Selakovic’s (TU Darmstadt) research about Actionable Program Analyses for Improving Software Performance, and Johannes Späth’s (Paderborn U) thesis on Synchronized Pushdown Systems for Pointer and Data-Flow Analysis – which actually won the award. The chapters describe key findings of the respective works, show their relevance and applicability to practice and industrial software engineering projects, and provide additional information and findings that have only been discovered afterwards, e.g. when applying the results in industry. This way, the book is not only interesting to other researchers, but also to industrial software professionals who would like to learn about the application of state-of-the-art methods in their daily work

Sistema web para la gestión de incidencias en la Universidad Agraria La Molina

El objetivo de esta investigación es determinar la influencia de un sistema web para la gestión de incidencias en la Universidad Agraria La Molina. La investigación fue de tipo aplicada, causa efecto, transversal con diseño pre experimental. En los resultados se realizaron en pre test y post test de los indicadores TIR: Tasa de incidencias resueltas y NIE: Nivel de incidencias escaladas, se realizó el fichaje para analizar las pruebas con los datos recolectados. Los resultados mostraron que el TIR mejoro de 67% al 79% con la implementación del sistema web para la gestión de incidencias y el NIE mejoro de 48% al 22% con la implementación del sistema web para el control de incidencias académicas. Se concluyó que el sistema web para gestión de incidencias mejora el promedio de incidencias en los indicadores en el post test y por ende mejora la gestión de incidencias en la Universidad Agraria La Molina en el 2022. Las recomendaciones fue realizar una investigación detallada de los procesos de una organización de tal forma que se identifique los defectos y se le brinde una solución adecuada

Privileging Tacit Knowledge within a Software Engineering Curriculum: A Living Educational Theory of Practice

Through action research I inquired into my pedagogical practice by questioning the nature of knowledge I valued as a lecturer. This questioning led me to develop my ‘living educational theory’ (Whitehead, 1989, p.41) of privileging tacit knowledge within a Software Engineering curriculum. My living educational theory is grounded in ideas of professional knowledge, relationships, competence, and expertise. In developing my theory, I explain how I transformed my ontological values of justice, democracy, and care in relation to students through standards of judgement that I developed to direct, test, and evaluate actions I took to improve my pedagogical practice. I describe how I experienced conflict between my existing practice and ontological values that led me to see myself as a ‘living contradiction’ (Whitehead, 1989, p.41) and to critique the dominant didactic perspectives located within my practice which privileged explicit disciplinary knowledge within a Software Engineering curriculum. To overcome feeling like a living contradiction, I researched and engaged with dialogical problem-posing pedagogies to encourage and support students to actively participate in their own development of becoming competent software engineering professionals. The dialogical problem-posing pedagogy I developed during this inquiry is constructed on the basis of just, democratic, and caring relationships with students, who are capable of exercising their agency and are constantly remaking their identity as they both create and use professional knowledge to solve Software Engineering problems. As I engaged with this dialogical problem-posing pedagogy, I re-conceptualised my identity as a pedagogical practitioner. I questioned the traditional and dominant orthodoxies that I subscribed to and which dictated that I positioned myself as the knowledge expert within the classroom. In doing so, I took action to move from being the knowledge expert to being a facilitator within the classroom to help students to realise their capacity to become competent software engineering practitioners

Explicitly Integrated Architecture - An Approach for Integrating Software Architecture Model Information with Program Code

Software-Architekturspezifikationen und -Implementierungen sind zwei Sichtweisen auf Softwarearchitektur. Sie beschreiben gemeinsame Aspekte, wie z.B. die Existenz und Verbindung von Komponenten. Die Spezifikation fügt Informationen zum Design, zur Kommunikation und zur Analyse hinzu. Die Implementierung beschreibt stattdessen zusätzlich Details für ein ausführbares System. Die Konsistenz zwischen diesen Darstellungen manuell zu verwalten, ist schwierig und fehleranfällig. Diese Arbeit stellt einen Ansatz vor, der Informationen der Architekturspezifikation vollständig in die Implementierung integriert, sodass die Spezifikation als eigenständiges Artefakt nicht mehr notwendig ist. Das Tool Codeling extrahiert die integrierte Architekturspezifikation in unterschiedlichen Sprachen aus dem Code und propagiert Änderungen in dieser Spezifikation automatisch an den Code zurück.Specifications and implementations are both viewpoints upon software architecture. Besides common aspects, the specification adds information for design, communication, or analysis, while the implementation adds details for an executable system instead. Managing the consistency between these representations manually is difficult and error-prone. This thesis presents an approach, that completely integrates architecture specifications with the implementation, so that separate specification artifacts are not necessary anymore. The tool Codeling extracts integrated architecture specifications in multiple languages from code, and automatically propagates changes in these specifications back to the code