Guidelines for using empirical studies in software engineering education

Software engineering education is under constant pressure to provide students with industry-relevant knowledge and skills. Educators must address issues beyond exercises and theories that can be directly rehearsed in small settings. Industry training has similar requirements of relevance as companies seek to keep their workforce up to date with technological advances. Real-life software development often deals with large, software-intensive systems and is influenced by the complex effects of teamwork and distributed software development, which are hard to demonstrate in an educational environment. A way to experience such effects and to increase the relevance of software engineering education is to apply empirical studies in teaching. In this paper, we show how different types of empirical studies can be used for educational purposes in software engineering. We give examples illustrating how to utilize empirical studies, discuss challenges, and derive an initial guideline that supports teachers to include empirical studies in software engineering courses. Furthermore, we give examples that show how empirical studies contribute to high-quality learning outcomes, to student motivation, and to the awareness of the advantages of applying software engineering principles. Having awareness, experience, and understanding of the actions required, students are more likely to apply such principles under real-life constraints in their working life.Peer reviewe

(MU-CTL-01-12) Towards Model Driven Game Engineering in SimSYS: Requirements for the Agile Software Development Process Game

Software Engineering (SE) and Systems Engineering (Sys) are knowledge intensive, specialized, rapidly changing disciplines; their educational infrastructure faces significant challenges including the need to rapidly, widely, and cost effectively introduce new or revised course material; encourage the broad participation of students; address changing student motivations and attitudes; support undergraduate, graduate and lifelong learning; and incorporate the skills needed by industry. Games have a reputation for being fun and engaging; more importantly immersive, requiring deep thinking and complex problem solving. We believe educational games are essential in the next generation of e-learning tools. An extensible, freely available, engaging, problem-based game platform that provides students with an interactive simulated experience closely resembling the activities performed in a (real) industry development project would transform the SE/Sys education infrastructure. Our goal is to extend the state-of-the-art research in SE/Sys education by investigating a game development platform (GDP) from an interdisciplinary perspective (education, game research, and software/systems engineering). A meta-model has been proposed to provide a rigourous foundation that integrates the three disciplines. The GDP is intended to support the semi-automated development of collections of scripted games and their execution, where each game embodies a specific set of learning objectives. The games are scripted using a template based approach. The templates integrate three approaches: use cases; storyboards; and state machines (timed, concurrent, hierarchical state machines). The specification templates capture the structure of the game (Game, Acts, Scenes, Screens, Challenges), storyline, characters (player, non-player, external), graphics, music/sound effects, rules, and so on. The instantiated templates are (manually) transformed into XML game scripts that can be loaded into the SimSYS Game Play Engine. As a game is played, the game play events are logged; they are analyzed to automatically assess a player’s accomplishments and automatically adapt the game play script. Currently, we are manually defining a collection of games. The games are being used to ensure the GDP is flexible and reliable (i.e., the prototype can load and correctly run a variety of game scripts), the ontology is comprehensive, and the templates assist in defining well-organized, modular game scripts. In this report, we present the initial part of an Agile Software Development Process game (Act I, Scenes 1 and 2) that embodies learning objectives related to SE fundamentals (requirements, architecture, testing, process); planning with Gantt charts; working with budgets; and selecting a team for an agile development project. A student player is rewarded in the game by getting hired, scoring points, or getting promoted to lead a project. The game has a variety of settings including a classroom, job fair, and a work environment with meeting rooms, cubicles, and a water cooler station. The main non-player characters include a teacher, boss, and an evil peer. In the future, semi-automated support for creating new game scripts will be explored using a wizard interface. The templates will be formally defined, supporting automated transformation into XML game scripts that can be loaded into the SimSYS Game Engine. We also plan to explore transforming the requirements into a notation that can be imported into a commercial tool that supports Statechart simulation

Forming Congnitive Connections: Desktop Learning Modules, Structural Analysis Software, and Full-Scale Structures

One of the biggest challenges in teaching civil engineering students a theory-intensive course like structural analysis is helping students make the connection between the engineering mechanics taught at the front of the room and how those concepts define the real behavior of actual engineered structures. Absent this connection, students will often learn how to successfully perform the mathematical functions on their homework assignments but lack confidence in their ability to apply the same concepts to the analysis or design of an actual structure. Common ways to try to provide this real-world application of structural analysis principles include the use of small-scale physical models, often referred to as desktop learning modules (DLMs), software modeling, or case studies of full-scale structures. Each of these options possesses a significant limitation when it comes to helping students form cognitive connections: DLMs often lack adaptability or measurability, software helps provide visualization of engineering mechanics but lacks a connection to actual physical behavior, and full-scale structures are rarely able to be loaded to produce observable behavior. An ideal learning experience for students would include the synthesis of all of these tools to help students develop cognitive connections between mechanics principles, engineering design tools, and real-world structures through hands-on and problem-based learning. A popular, recently developed, commercially available structural modeling DLM (Mola Structural Kit; no association with the authors) provides a high enough level of structural simulation and adaptability that it should allow for the kind of learning synthesis that has traditionally been challenging to produce. The Mola DLM permits students to create a variety of structural models that can reasonably approximate case studies of real structural behaviors in a manner that can be measured and compared to models developed using structural analysis software. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of an approach combining RISA 3D structural engineering software, the Mola physical model, and examples from actual structural systems at helping students form correct cognitive connections between principles of engineering mechanics and the behaviors of real structures. Preparation for this study involved mechanically characterizing Mola components, developing parameters for implementation in structural analysis software, and validating the process of comparison between physical and computational models. Once the concept was confirmed to be practicable, worksheet-driven activities were developed and conducted in two undergraduate engineering classes. For these activities, students worked in small groups as they considered real-world applications of either portal frames or lateral force resisting systems, built Mola and structural analysis software models that reflected these real structural systems, then compared the modeled behaviors to practical applications of these concepts. Assessment was conducted via a mixed methods study using quantitative pre- and post-assessments and a small selection of follow-up interviews. Results suggest that students completing the activities demonstrated an increased ability to connect the concepts displayed by the physical models to the behaviors of the computational models and the applications in real-world structures. However, these gains did not seem to be uniform across all students, and modifications to the activity in future iterations may be able to further increase this and similar activities’ effectiveness

Electro-Pneumatic Wiring Software for Distance-Learning Students in Automation Control Laboratories

When teaching electro-pneumatic circuits in the automation control class for a distance-learning program, one of the main issues is how to provide hands-on experience for students. In most cases, they can only use simulation design software and watch videos solving laboratory problems without access to the actual equipment. In this paper, the authors developed an electrical wiring software and assembly platform which can help students enhance their hands-on experience when taking the course online. Results show that the performance between on-campus students and distance-learning (DL) students are very similar.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Utilizing an Emporium Course Design to Improve Calculus Readiness of Engineering Students

The intervention has targeted incoming students in Engineering and Computer Sciencedegrees. Participating students were selected who had a record of participation in Pre-Calculus classes in high school, but who had not demonstrated their readiness to take Calcu-lus, as measured by placement tests and existing credit. The course design uses an emporiummethod, specifically the Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) software,in a computer lab to deliver to students an intensive program of mathematical practice andexploration. The course design is meant to take advantage of students? existing knowledge,rewarding them for it in fact, and focus them on specific Algebra and Trigonometry topicsin which they need more practice and one-on-one instruction [1, 2]. The purpose of this activity is to accelerate the Calculus preparedness for a subset ofstudents held back due to standardized test scores and perhaps limited mastery of the prereq-uisite content. The benefits are improved engineering readiness, reduced time-to-graduation,and improved performance in gatekeeper courses. To maintain student interest, and connect the problems and topics they are working indetail on, we included in the course cooperative activities with engineering problems asso-ciated with railway safety and transportation; making use of tours of existing laboratoriesand experimental apparatuses. This combination of a problem focused course, tailored toindividual student?s needs and experiences, emphasizing mastery, and then motivated bydirect connections to current engineering problems and research is providing for an impor-tant improvement in the engineering degree experience for a subset of students who wouldtraditionally be at a disadvantage in their program.References[1] Twigg, C. A. (2011, May-June). The Math Emporium: Higher Education’s Silver Bullet. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning.[2] Fine, A., Duggan, M., & Braddy, L. (2009). Removing remediation requirements: Effec- tiveness of intervention programs. PRIMUS, 19(5), 433?446

International conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering: Session chair

The Thirtieth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2018) will be held at the Hotel Pullman, San Francisco Bay, USA, from July 1 to July 3, 2018. SEKE2018 will also be dedicated in memory of Professor Lofti Zadeh, a great scholar, pioneer and leader in fuzzy sets theory and soft computing. The conference aims at bringing together experts in software engineering and knowledge engineering to discuss on relevant results in either software engineering or knowledge engineering or both. Special emphasis will be put on the transference of methods between both domains. The theme this year is soft computing in software engineering & knowledge engineering. Submission of papers and demos are both welcome

User-centered visual analysis using a hybrid reasoning architecture for intensive care units

One problem pertaining to Intensive Care Unit information systems is that, in some cases, a very dense display of data can result. To ensure the overview and readability of the increasing volumes of data, some special features are required (e.g., data prioritization, clustering, and selection mechanisms) with the application of analytical methods (e.g., temporal data abstraction, principal component analysis, and detection of events). This paper addresses the problem of improving the integration of the visual and analytical methods applied to medical monitoring systems. We present a knowledge- and machine learning-based approach to support the knowledge discovery process with appropriate analytical and visual methods. Its potential benefit to the development of user interfaces for intelligent monitors that can assist with the detection and explanation of new, potentially threatening medical events. The proposed hybrid reasoning architecture provides an interactive graphical user interface to adjust the parameters of the analytical methods based on the users' task at hand. The action sequences performed on the graphical user interface by the user are consolidated in a dynamic knowledge base with specific hybrid reasoning that integrates symbolic and connectionist approaches. These sequences of expert knowledge acquisition can be very efficient for making easier knowledge emergence during a similar experience and positively impact the monitoring of critical situations. The provided graphical user interface incorporating a user-centered visual analysis is exploited to facilitate the natural and effective representation of clinical information for patient care