Threshold Concepts in Object-Oriented Modelling

Proponents of the object-oriented (OO) paradigm frequently claim that the OO paradigm is ‘more natural’ than the procedural paradigm because the world is filled with objects that have both attributes and behaviors. However students in higher education generally experience considerable difficulty in understanding OO concepts and acquiring the necessary skills in object-oriented analysis and design. This paper proposes OO modelling to be a set of threshold concepts and describes a study that sought to improve undergraduate students’ learning of OO modelling by adopting concept maps as ‘stepping stones’ to facilitate the development of analysis class and sequence diagrams

An Approach for e-Commerce On-Demand Service-oriented Product line Development

The growth of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) is important to the economic development of Africa. This growth can be greatly enhanced by leveraging IT in business activities since e-commerce is a vital tool to allow participation in globalization. Many SMMEs cannot afford to own e-commerce facilities and to reduce cost. An SMME can pay for just the e-commerce facility they use without owning the services or infrastructure. Due to the dynamic nature of the business domain, delivering such on-demand functionalities involves high flexibility in adapting to new client requirements; therefore, a systematic approach to software component reuse must be adopted to reduce cost and the time to market for new products. This work explores the reuse capabilities of a hybridization of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software Product Line (SPL)

Targeted Blended Learning through Competency Assessment in an Undergraduate Information Systems Program

The author Joelle Elmaleh was publishing under the name Joelle Ducrot.</p

Implementation of Simple Additive Weights To Determine Priorities For The Resolution of Information Technology Problems

The Regional Secretariat of West Java Province (Setda Jabar) is a government agency within the local government environment in West Java Province. Along with the development of information technology, using technology such as computers and the internet in a government agency is very important to support work. There are times when devices and systems do not work correctly, such as internet disturbances and computer software and hardware problems handled by technicians. Technicians not only manage information technology infrastructure at the West Java Regional Secretariat but also manage information technology infrastructure in three (3) official houses. Technicians are also faced with an organizational structure with many bureaus and sections. There is yet to be a definite procedure in the complaint reporting process. There is no helpdesk system as a reporting medium. With the many bureaus, the number of information technology facilities served so that technicians find it difficult to determine the priority of the work that must be served first. Given these problems, a Decision Support System approach uses the Simple Additive Weight method by using determining criteria and weights. The criteria used include Work Units, Positions, Types of Complaints, and Official Notes. The system development method used is Object Oriented Analysis Design (OOAD). This system is expected to assist technicians in determining services that match their needs and situations

Teaching Information Systems Development via Process Variants

Acquiring the knowledge to assemble an integrated Information System (IS) development process that is tailored to the specific needs of a project has become increasingly important. It is therefore necessary for educators to impart to students this crucial skill. However, Situational Method Engineering (SME) is an inherently complex process that may not be suitable for students to apply in a classroom IS development project. SME is defined as the systematic creation of new methods from parts of existing methods, i.e., the method fragments, by taking into account the specific business situation of each IS development project. A less complex pedagogical approach is to teach students how to design an IS development process variant that incorporates the building blocks of various existing processes in order to leverage the advantages of each individual process. This paper first proposes a framework for teaching students the designing of process variants, followed by a preliminary empirical study conducted in a genuine classroom setting to determine whether the framework benefits students. Through the preliminary study, we discuss how the student IS development project teams had successfully applied our framework to design and use their own process variants. The initial observations obtained from the study also suggest that students who designed their own process variant appeared to consistently outperform those who did not, i.e., students which opted to use the traditional waterfall model

Measuring Student Performance and Providing Feedback using Competency Framework

The author Joelle Elmaleh was publishing under the name Joelle Ducrot. </p

CDIO Projects in DTU’s B.Eng. in IT Study Program

Since the fall 2008 all B.Eng. study programs at the Technical University of Denmark have been based on the CDIO concept. The adoption of the CDIO standards and principles resulted in new or significantly revised study programs. As part of this effort design-build projects have been introduced on each of the first 4 semesters, and each semester-project spans several courses. The aim of this paper is to describe the four CDIO semester projects in the B.Eng. in IT study, and – along with similar papers describing the other six B.Eng. programs – to provide documentation to accompany an exposition with stands providing additional information and with students demonstrating their projects. The paper is narrowly focused on the IT-study program. At the time of writing this paper the students enrolled in 2008 have completed all four semesters in the new CDIO-based study plan, and the students enrolled in 2009 are currently in the process of finishing the 4 th semester. Consequently, the paper is reporting on curriculum development which has been implemented, and for which experiences have gained

Test data generation method for dynamic - structural testing in automatic programming assessment

Automatic Programming Assessment or so-called APA has being known as a significant method in assisting lecturers to perform automated assessment and grading on students’ programming assignments. Having to execute a dynamic testing in APA, it is necessary to prepare a set of test data through a systematic test data generation process. Particularly focusing on the software testing research area, various automated methods for test data generation have been proposed. However, they are rarely being utilized in recent studies of APA. There have been limited early attempts to integrate APA and test data generation, but there is still a lack of research in deriving and generating test data for dynamic structural testing. To bridge the gap this study proposes a method of test data generation for dynamic structural testing (or is called DyStruc-TDG). DyStruc-TDG is realized as a tangible deliverable that acts as a test data generator to support APA. The findings from conducted controlled experiment that is based on one-group pre-test and post-test design depict that DyStruc-TDG improves the criteria of reliability (or called positive testing) of test data adequacy in programming assessments. The proposed method is expectantly to assist the lecturers who teach introductory programming courses to derive and generate test data and test cases to perform automatic programming assessment regardless of having a particular knowledge of test cases design in conducting a structural testing. By utilizing this method as part of APA, the lecturers’ workload can be reduced effectively since the typical manual assessments are always prone to errors and leading to inconsistency

Management implications of moving from a traditional structured systems development methodology to object-orientation

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2003As software application systems become larger and more complex, many software employers and managers believe that the key to sustaining its competitive advantage in the computing technology market lies in its software engineering capabilities. Software crisis situation seems to be a common occurrence in the software development environment as systems become larger and more complex. Object Orientation (OO) has been proposed as a viable alternative to traditional approach (i.e., structured techniques), an approach that many hope will solve the current software crisis. 00 is a new paradigm, and it requires new types of knowledge, new specialists, and significant changes in the mindset, an entirely different way of thinking, representing and solving a problem. The transition of moving toward the 00 from the traditional approach may involve a high risk of failure if the managers do not understand the nature of paradigm shifts and do not anticipate the future. The problem of moving to 00 has become very important. An understanding of potential problems from migrating to the new paradigm helps managers make a smoother paradigm shift. The implications and challenges of the 00 paradigm are presented. The study suggests that Object-Oriented System Development (OOSD) requires more discipline, management and training than traditional software development does. Education and experience are keys for the success of any OOSD project

An RFID Based E-commerce Solution for the Implementation of Secure Unattended Stores

The present research concentrates on automation of retail process that involves customers. One can save on total man power required to manage a physical retail store and store tills if RFID at item level is implemented in a retail store. One can reduce number of persons at Security / Payment till required at store counter and exit. Although RFID can automate and reduce human errors at payment counters. A commercial transaction takes place the moment a customer (buyer) reaches the store exit gate. The proposed solution implemented will cut down operational cost for retail stores and a business can pass the benefit to customers. It will ease customer shopping by extending shopping hours in retail physical stores. The work that has been carried out to produce a conceptual system that implements and integrates a RFID based message system with existing transactional based E-commerce applications. The research conducts a comparative overview of the various technological frameworks, together with transaction and data transfer. The researched and the applied architecture for the proposed prototype system minimize changes on the existing applications and network design. The results of the experiment using a prototype are analyzed. The study concludes with the reviews and considers how the issues highlighted may be addressed in order to achieve an improved framework through discussing possible solutions. The prototype system has been successfully developed. With the prototype one can achieve objective of unattended store. The tests have demonstrated that it is possible to make such system with required security, reliability and scalability