A Rubric to Evaluate and Enhance Requirements Elicitation Interviewing Skills

Eliciting effective requirements is vital for successful Information Systems development and implementation. Interviews with stakeholders and users are an important part of the requirements elicitation process. Thus, teaching students how to better perform requirements elicitation interviews is a critical task for information systems faculty. However, prior to this research, a common tool or rubric to evaluate the effectiveness of requirements elicitation interviews was not found in the literature. The purpose of this research was to develop a rubric that can be used to both evaluate (provide summative measures) and enhance (via formative training techniques) the requirements elicitation interviewing skills of information systems students. The results of this research provide both quantitative and qualitative evidence that the rubric developed and described in this paper substantially improved the ability of our students to conduct requirements elicitation interviews. Along with detailing the various methodologies we used, this paper provides practical pedagogical suggestions and lessons learned along with covering possible future avenues of research in this area

Learning from mistakes: An empirical study of elicitation interviews performed by novices

© 2018 IEEE. [Context] Interviews are the most widely used elicitation technique in requirements engineering. However, conducting effective requirements elicitation interviews is challenging, due to the combination of technical and soft skills that requirements analysts often acquire after a long period of professional practice. Empirical evidence about training the novices on conducting effective requirements elicitation interviews is scarce. [Objectives] We present a list of most common mistakes that novices make in requirements elicitation interviews. The objective is to assist the educators in teaching interviewing skills to student analysts. [Re-search Method] We conducted an empirical study involving role-playing and authentic assessment with 110 students, teamed up in 28 groups, to conduct interviews with a customer. One re-searcher made observation notes during the interview while two researchers reviewed the recordings. We qualitatively analyzed the data to identify the themes and classify the mistakes. [Results and conclusion] We identified 34 unique mistakes classified into 7 high level themes. We also give examples of the mistakes made by the novices in each theme, to assist the educationists and trainers. Our research design is a novel combination of well-known pedagogical approaches described in sufficient details to make it re-peatable for future requirements engineering education and training research

A Systematic Literature Review of Requirements Engineering Education

Requirements engineering (RE) has established itself as a core software engineering discipline. It is well acknowledged that good RE leads to higher quality software and considerably reduces the risk of failure or budget-overspending of software development projects. It is of vital importance to train future software engineers in RE and educate future requirements engineers to adequately manage requirements in various projects. To this date, there exists no central concept of what RE education shall comprise. To lay a foundation, we report on a systematic literature review of the feld and provide a systematic map describing the current state of RE education. Doing so allows us to describe how the educational landscape has changed over the last decade. Results show that only a few established author collaborations exist and that RE education research is predominantly published in venues other than the top RE research venues (i.e., in venues other than the RE conference and journal). Key trends in RE instruction of the past decade include involvement of real or realistic stakeholders, teaching predominantly elicitation as an RE activity, and increasing student factors such as motivation or communication skills. Finally, we discuss open opportunities in RE education, such as training for security requirements and supply chain risk management, as well as developing a pedagogical foundation grounded in evidence of effective instructional approaches

Into the future : inspiring and stimulating users\u27 creativity

This paper proposes a new approach to engaging and stimulating users in the requirements analysis process when developing a new information system &ndash; an ICT innovation for business. The approach is based on a synthesis of a constructivist learning theory and a creativity education theory. In contrast to previous approaches in which the systems analyst elicits requirements from the user, in the proposed approach, the user is engaged and stimulated to become a proactive and creative learner in the process of identifying and discovering their business problem as well as exploring opportunities to apply ICT innovations to solve the problem.Two experiential digital simulations are described as a proof of concept to demonstrate the proposed approach a learning environment. Learning from the case study suggests that both systems analyst and business users can be stimulated to be active learners in their discovery of problem, creative ideas and problem solutions in requirements elicitation and discovery.<br /

Reviewing the Implementation of Life Sciences Curriculum in Turkey Using Elicitation Techniques

Abstract. The aims of this case study were (1) to investigate the general characteristics of the Life Sciences Curriculum (LSC); (2) to examine how the LSC is implemented in a public primary school from the perspectives of teachers, students and administrators; and (3) to identify whether implementation of the curriculum was in line with the principles of constructivist pedagogy. The study participants consisted of the school administrator, 2 co-administrators, 4 classroom teachers and 87 students from second- and third-grade classrooms chosen from a primary school in one of the districts of Ankara, Turkey. Data was collected through document analysis, classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with administrators, stimulated-recall interviews with teachers, and creative drama activities with students. Findings indicated that LSC was prepared consistent with constructivist pedagogy. Explicitly, multiple intelligences theory and contemporary teaching-learning approaches were kept in view in the design of the LSC, and the curriculum composed of thematic units that focuses on developing skills like critical thinking, creative thinking and problem-solving

Topic interest as a learning construct to elicit leaners’ oral participation

El objetivo del proyecto actual es tener una comprensión más amplia de cómo diversos temas tales como entretenimiento, hábitos saludables, actividades de ocio y el mundo futuro, entre otros subtemas con los que trabajamos, fortalecen la participación oral de los estudiantes cuando son parte de actividades y tareas desarrolladas dentro las clases de la lengua extranjera. Este proyecto de aula se aplicó con la participación de 23 estudiantes, nueve chicas y doce chicos que tomaron el curso número tres del Instituto de Lenguas Extranjeras, ILEX, en la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira. Además, éste proyecto se vinculó a diferentes métodos que los docentes normalmente pueden usar, como las técnicas de estimulación del habla, para promover el uso de la lengua extranjera en clase de las cuales se espera que apoyen a los alumnos y les ayude a mejorar su habilidad oral. Los instrumentos empleados en este proyecto de aula para recolectar datos fueron debates, juego de roles, entrevistas, discusiones en grupos pequeños y además un breve cuestionario implementado cuando cada clase finalizaba, para que los estudiantes reflexionaran acerca de su desempeño en clase con respecto a su participación oral. Se encontró que el uso de temas relacionados con los gustos, las necesidades y los intereses de los estudiantes demostró ser una herramienta pertinente que conlleva a mejorar la participación oral del alumno en el aula guiándolos para continuar su proceso de aprendizaje de lenguas. Como resultado, durante la implementación de este conjunto de temas y estrategias, los alumnos también mostraron una mejor reacción a las clases de la lengua extranjera respondiendo a las instrucciones y los comandos dados por el profesor en las actividades orales sin negarse a éstos

Calibrated Peer Reviews in Requirements Engineering Instruction: Application and Experiences

Instructing Requirements Engineering (RE) is a challenging task due to the absence of single absolute and correct solutions computer science students so often strive for. Instead, there is often a variety of compromise solutions for each RE problem. Therefore, it is essential that aspiring Software Engineers are exposed to as many solution alternatives as possible to experience the implications of RE decisions. To facilitate this, we propose a learning-by-multiple-examples process, in which we make use of a calibrated peer review grading model for assignments. Paired with a think-pair-share model of semester-long, industry-realistic, project-based low-stakes milestones, we were able to generate a rich collaborative learning atmosphere. In this paper, we report the course design and experiences from the application of calibrated peer reviews in an undergraduate RE course. Qualitative and quantitative application results show that calibrated peer reviews significantly improve students’ learning outcomes

Developing Measurable Cross-Departmental Learning Objectives for Requirements Elicitation in an Information Systems Curriculum

The ability to elicit information systems requirements is a necessary learning objective for students in a contemporary information systems curriculum, and is a skill vital to their careers. Common challenges in teaching this skill include both the lack of structure and guidance in information systems textbooks as well as the view that a student’s education consists of a disparate set of unrelated courses. These challenges are exacerbated by faculty who focus only on their taught courses and by textbooks that often promote an isolated, passing glance at both the importance of and the idea behind requirements elicitation. In this paper, we describe a multi-year, faculty-led effort to create and refine learning activities that are aligned to requirements elicitation learning objectives both within and scaffolded across courses in a modern information systems curriculum. To achieve success in developing this marketable skill within information systems students, learning activities were integrated across the entire information systems major in a process we call Bloomification, where learning objectives, aligned learning activities, and courses are related and connected across the curriculum. This cross-departmental process is presented and lessons learned by the faculty are discussed

ICT and its assessment at 16: an enquiry into the perceptions of year 11 students

This study, conducted between 2006 and 2011, enquired into student perceptions of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and its assessment at aged 16. The prevailing orthodoxies amongst writers, commentators and educationalists are that the subject does not reflect the learning and use made by young people of technology. The voice of the learner, so often lauded in aspects of school democracy and in formative assessment, has not been heard in respect of the high-stakes assessment at the end of Key Stage (KS) 4 in schools in England. This research was a step in filling that void. Taking an interpretive phenomenological approach three phases of empirical data collection were used each building on the previous ones. To bring the student perception and voice to the fore a repertory grid analysis was initially used to elicit constructs of learning and assessment directly from the students. This was followed by a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews across a sample of state-funded schools in England. The use of a multiple-phase data collection allowed phenomena to be distilled with successively more depth at each phase