Mining and linking crowd-based software engineering how-to screencasts

In recent years, crowd-based content in the form of screencast videos has gained in popularity among software engineers. Screencasts are viewed and created for different purposes, such as a learning aid, being part of a software project’s documentation, or as a general knowledge sharing resource. For organizations to remain competitive in attracting and retaining their workforce, they must adapt to these technological and social changes in software engineering practices. In this thesis, we propose a novel methodology for mining and integrating crowd-based multi- media content in existing workflows to help provide software engineers of different levels of experience and roles access to a documentation they are familiar with or prefer. As a result, we first aim to gain insights on how a user’s background and the task to be performed influence the use of certain documentation media. We focus on tutorial screencasts to identify their important information sources and provide insights on their usage, advantages, and disadvantages from a practitioner’s perspective. To that end, we conduct a survey of software engineers. We discuss how software engineers benefit from screencasts as well as challenges they face in using screencasts as project documentation. Our survey results revealed that screencasts and question and answers sites are among the most popular crowd-based information sources used by software engineers. Also, the level of experience and the role or reason for resorting to a documentation source affects the types of documentation used by software engineers. The results of our survey support our motivation in this thesis and show that for screencasts, high quality content and a narrator are very important components for users. Unfortunately, the binary format of videos makes analyzing video content difficult. As a result, dissecting and filtering multimedia information based on its relevance to a given project is an inherently difficult task. Therefore, it is necessary to provide automated approaches for mining and linking this crowd-based multimedia documentation to their relevant software artifacts. In this thesis, we apply LDA-based (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) mining approaches that take as input a set of screencast artifacts, such as GUI (Graphical User Interface) text (labels) and spoken words, to perform information extraction and, therefore, increase the availability of both textual and multimedia documentation for various stakeholders of a software product. For example, this allows screencasts to be linked to other software artifacts such as source code to help software developers/maintainers have access to the implementation details of an application feature. We also present applications of our proposed methodology that include: 1) an LDA-based mining approach that extracts use case scenarios in text format from screencasts, 2) an LDA-based approach that links screencasts to their relevant artifacts (e.g., source code), and 3) a Semantic Web-based approach to establish direct links between vulnerability exploitation screencasts and their relevant vulnerability descriptions in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and indirectly link screencasts to their relevant Maven dependencies. To evaluate the applicability of the proposed approach, we report on empirical case studies conducted on existing screencasts that describe different use case scenarios of the WordPress and Firefox open source applications or vulnerability exploitation scenarios

Video tutorial screencast and sketchup make (VTS-SUM) for low achievers in learning 3d geometry

Students’ weaknesses in learning 3-Dimensional (3D) geometry are mostly associated with their low level of geometric thinking. Although a 3D software has been proposed as a manipulative learning tool, they had difficulties using it. Therefore, a suitable learning strategy should be designed to overcome the problems. The purpose of the study was to assess a learning strategy, known as Video Tutorial Screencast SketchUp Make (VTS-SUM), which integrates screencast techniques with a 3D software. VTS-SUM is a know-how video that assists students to visualize steps in drawing the orthogonal projections for 3D objects. A total of 180 students from a secondary school were involved in the study, conducted using a quantitative approach, where, a van Hiele Geometric Thinking (vHGT) test was employed to find out the level of students’ geometric thinking. The findings obtained showed that the majority of the students were at the Lowest Level (Level L1). As for usability test, a total of thirty students were selected from among those below this level. They were given some time to watch the video and perform hands-on activities using the software. A seven-point Likert scale questionnaire, comprising four constructs, namely, usefulness, ease of use, ease of learning and satisfaction, was used to measure the students’ perceptions of the usability test. The results obtained indicated that the students had positive perceptions towards the usage of VTS-SUM in their learning, thus accentuating its good potentials to enhance learning in mathematics

Metodología para realizar mini-vídeos accesibles y multilingües para formación Universitaria [A methodology to create accessible and multiligual mini-videos to learning higher education]

La formación a la largo de la vida es necesaria en cualquier institución o empresa. La autoformación mediante mini-vídeos es una opción ágil y efectiva. Sin embargo, la elaboración de estos materiales digitales supone un costo en recursos, tiempo, esfuerzo y dinero que puede ser inasumible. Asimismo, estos recursos multimedia suelen incumplir la Directiva Europea de Accesibilidad Digital. En este trabajo se presenta una metodología para la elaboración de mini-vídeos formativos de bajo coste, accesibles y multilingües. Entendiendo como mini-videos a aquellos que tienen una duración de entre 5 y 10 minutos aproximadamente. De igual modo, se presenta un proyecto en desarrollo en el que se aplicará dicha metodología en la formación que realiza la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Jaén. Esta praxis permitirá refinar la metodología, evaluar su eficacia en función del coste, y en su caso, proponer un proceso sistemático de elaboración de mini-vídeos que se pueda integrar fácilmente en la gobernanza de Tecnología de la Información (TI) de cualquier institución, organismo o empresa. [Lifelong learning is necessary at any institution or company. Self-training using mini-videos is an agile and effective option. However, the development of digital material needs resources: time, effort and money that could be unaffordable. In addition, these multimedia resources usually fail to comply the European Directive on Digital Accessibility. This paper presents a methodology for the development of low cost and accessible training mini-videos with multilingual support. It is understood that a mini-video is a video whose duration is approximately 5-10 minutes. Also, it presents the project in which this methodology and techniques are being applied for the training carried out by the Service of Library at the University of Jaén. This proposal will allow to refine and assess effectiveness and cost of current training. Finally, the proposal aims to define a systematic process of developing mini-videos that can be easily integrated into the Information Technology (IT) governance of any institution, organization or company.

Non Linear Software Documentation with Interactive Code Examples

Documentation enables sharing knowledge between the developers of a technology and its users. Creating quality documents, however, is challenging: Documents must satisfy the needs of a large audience without being overwhelming for individuals. We address this challenge with a new document format, named Casdoc. Casdoc documents are interactive resources centered around code examples for programmers. Explanations of the code elements are presented as annotations that the readers reveal based on their needs. We evaluated Casdoc in a field study with over 300 participants who used 126 documents as part of a software design course. The majority of participants adopted Casdoc instead of a baseline format during the study. We observed that interactive documents can contain more information than static documents without being distracting to readers. We also gathered insights into five aspects of Casdoc that can be applied to other formats, and propose five guidelines to improve navigability in online documents.Comment: 29 page

La innovación docente como misión del profesorado. Actas del IV Congreso Internacional sobre aprendizaje, innovación y competitividad. CINAIC 2017

La misión de CINAIC se basa en contribuir a mejorar el proceso de formación y aprendizaje a través de la innovación educativa. Para ello, y desde el año 2011, los años impares se organiza un congreso internacional y los años pares se desarrollan actividades experimentales y abiertas con un fuerte contenido innovador. CINAIC también tiene el compromiso de ayudar a mejorar la calidad de la innovación educativa llevada a cabo con planteamientos científicos y, en la medida de sus posibilidades, contribuir a divulgar dichas experiencias para que se produzca un mayor impacto en la educación. CINAIC se ha consolidado como un punto de encuentro del profesorado que realiza innovación, como un foro de debate con una activa participación de los asistentes, como un centro de divulgación de las buenas prácticas y como un espacio de aprendizaje y experimentación. Junto a las innovaciones ya consolidadas, como presentaciones en formato PechaKucha, como actividades participativas y cooperativas, como seminarios y talleres sobre temáticas útiles (tendencias, indicadores y divulgación científica de la innovación educativa), se introduce una nueva actividad denominada Eco-Lab. Eco-Lab se basa en crear espacios abiertos de análisis y debate que giran en torno a cuestiones claves para el desarrollo de la innovación educativa. Los participantes se agrupan por perfiles para debatir, de forma independiente, sobre un tema propuesto y para, posteriormente, analizar conjuntamente los puntos de convergencia y divergencia entre los grupos. Desde los comités, organizador, científico y editorial les damos la bienvenida a esta nueva edición de CINAIC que tendrá lugar en Zaragoza del 4 al 6 de octubre de 2017