Beyond Surveys: Analyzing Software Development Artifacts to Assess Teaching Efforts

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents an approach of using software development artifacts to gauge student behavior and the effectiveness of changes to curriculum design. There is an ongoing need to adapt university courses to changing requirements and shifts in industry. As an educator it is therefore vital to have access to methods, with which to ascertain the effects of curriculum design changes. In this paper, we present our approach of analyzing software repositories in order to gauge student behavior during project work. We evaluate this approach in a case study of a university undergraduate software development course teaching agile development methodologies. Surveys revealed positive attitudes towards the course and the change of employed development methodology from Scrum to Kanban. However, surveys were not usable to ascertain the degree to which students had adapted their workflows and whether they had done so in accordance with course goals. Therefore, we analyzed students' software repository data, which represents information that can be collected by educators to reveal insights into learning successes and detailed student behavior. We analyze the software repositories created during the last five courses, and evaluate differences in workflows between Kanban and Scrum usage

Bringing Global Sourcing into The Classroom: Experiential Learning Via a Global Software Development Project

The growing trend in offshore software development has imposed new skills requirements on collaborating global partners. In the U.S. this has translated into skill sets that include communications, project management, business analysis, and team management. In a virtual setting, these skills take on a complex proportion. This paper describes an educational initiative in offshore software development between undergraduate students enrolled in a project management course at Marquette University, USA and graduate business students enrolled in an Information Systems Analysis and Design course at Management Development Institute, India. The course replicated an offshore client/vendor relationship in a virtual setting. For faculty considering such initiatives, this paper describes the setting and factors critical to success of this initiative and cautions against others that can be detrimental to such an effort

Scrum2Kanban: Integrating Kanban and Scrum in a University Software Engineering Capstone Course

Using university capstone courses to teach agile software development methodologies has become commonplace, as agile methods have gained support in professional software development. This usually means students are introduced to and work with the currently most popular agile methodology: Scrum. However, as the agile methods employed in the industry change and are adapted to different contexts, university courses must follow suit. A prime example of this is the Kanban method, which has recently gathered attention in the industry. In this paper, we describe a capstone course design, which adds the hands-on learning of the lean principles advocated by Kanban into a capstone project run with Scrum. This both ensures that students are aware of recent process frameworks and ideas as well as gain a more thorough overview of how agile methods can be employed in practice. We describe the details of the course and analyze the participating students' perceptions as well as our observations. We analyze the development artifacts, created by students during the course in respect to the two different development methodologies. We further present a summary of the lessons learned as well as recommendations for future similar courses. The survey conducted at the end of the course revealed an overwhelmingly positive attitude of students towards the integration of Kanban into the course

Open Source Tools to Support Teaching Agile Software Development

Learning agile software development methodologies are important due to the popularity of agility in software industry. Agile software development has several practices and each practice needs specific tools to work with. Fortunately, there are plenty of open source tools to support working with the agile practices. However, each tool is a separate tool and there is no information about the interrelation of those open source tools. In this paper we propose a set of open source tools to support agile software development course. We start from identifying the principles and practices of agile software development and continue with examining open source tools that fit with agile practices. The relationship between the open source tools is also determined, based on their functionalities

Development of a Course on Collaboration Tools in Software Engineering

Selles lõputöös on kirjeldatud uue kursuse"Koostöövahendid tarkvaraarenduses" loomise ja õpetamise protsessi Tartu Ülikooli arvutiteaduse instituudi jaoks. Kursuse eesmärgiks on tutvustada bakalaureuseõppe tudengitele versioonihaldustarkvara (Version Control System, VCS), Git hajutatud versioonihaldustarkvara, ülesannete haldamist (issue tracking) ja pidevat integratsiooni (Continuous Integration, CI). Selgitatakse kursuse õpiväljundeid ja muid kursuse vormingut mõjutanud tegureid ning kirjeldatakse kursuse jaoks loodud materjale, nagu loenguslaidid, videoloengud ja praktikumijuhendid, ning kursuse jooksul käsitletud teemasid. Lõpus on välja toodud kursuse hindamiseks loodud ja kasutatud materjalid, analüüsitud nende tulemeid ja tehtud ettepanekud kursuse võimalike tulevaste toimumiste jaoks.This thesis describes the creation and delivery of a new course in the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu, titled Collaboration Tools in Software Engineering. The course aims to familiarise bachelor's students with the concepts of Version Control Systems (VCS), Git distributed VCS, issue tracking systems and related collaboration tools, and Continuous Integration (CI). Learning objectives and didactic considerations that shaped the design of the course are explained. Materials that were created for the course and topics that were covered are explained in greater detail. A set of evaluation criteria for the course are presented, the results of the evaluation are analysed and improvements for a potential future iteration of the course are proposed

The shuttle main engine: A first look

Anyone entering the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) team attends a two week course to become familiar with the design and workings of the engine. This course provides intensive coverage of the individual hardware items and their functions. Some individuals, particularly those involved with software maintenance and development, have felt overwhelmed by this volume of material and their lack of a logical framework in which to place it. To provide this logical framework, it was decided that a brief self-taught introduction to the overall operation of the SSME should be designed. To aid the people or new team members with an interest in the software, this new course should also explain the structure and functioning of the controller and its software. This paper presents a description of this presentation

Experiences in teaching a graduate course on model-driven software development

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Model-driven software development (MDSD) aims to support the development and evolution of software intensive systems using the basic concepts of model, metamodel, and model transformation. In parallel with the ongoing academic research, MDSD is more and more applied in industrial practices. After being accepted both by a broad community of researchers and the industry, it is now being introduced in university courses. This article describes the experiences of three years of teaching of the graduate course Model-Driven Software Development at Bilkent University in Turkey. The lessons learned can be useful for peer educators who teach or aim to teach a similar course. © 2011 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC