Navigating the Path of Women in Software Engineering: From Academia to Industry

Context. Women remain significantly underrepresented in software engineering, leading to a lasting gender gap in the software industry. This disparity starts in education and extends into the industry, causing challenges such as hostile work environments and unequal opportunities. Addressing these issues is crucial for fostering an inclusive and diverse software engineering workforce. Aim. This study aims to enhance the literature on women in software engineering, exploring their journey from academia to industry and discussing perspectives, challenges, and support. We focus on Brazilian women to extend existing research, which has largely focused on North American and European contexts. Method. In this study, we conducted a cross-sectional survey, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, focusing on women's experiences in software engineering to explore their journey from university to the software industry. Findings. Our findings highlight persistent challenges faced by women in software engineering, including gender bias, harassment, work-life imbalance, undervaluation, low sense of belonging, and impostor syndrome. These difficulties commonly emerge from university experiences and continue to affect women throughout their entire careers. Conclusion. In summary, our study identifies systemic challenges in women's software engineering journey, emphasizing the need for organizational commitment to address these issues. We provide actionable recommendations for practitioners.Comment: 12 page

Research and Education in Computational Science and Engineering

This report presents challenges, opportunities, and directions for computational science and engineering (CSE) research and education for the next decade. Over the past two decades the field of CSE has penetrated both basic and applied research in academia, industry, and laboratories to advance discovery, optimize systems, support decision-makers, and educate the scientific and engineering workforce. Informed by centuries of theory and experiment, CSE performs computational experiments to answer questions that neither theory nor experiment alone is equipped to answer. CSE provides scientists and engineers with algorithmic inventions and software systems that transcend disciplines and scales. CSE brings the power of parallelism to bear on troves of data. Mathematics-based advanced computing has become a prevalent means of discovery and innovation in essentially all areas of science, engineering, technology, and society, and the CSE community is at the core of this transformation. However, a combination of disruptive developments---including the architectural complexity of extreme-scale computing, the data revolution and increased attention to data-driven discovery, and the specialization required to follow the applications to new frontiers---is redefining the scope and reach of the CSE endeavor. With these many current and expanding opportunities for the CSE field, there is a growing demand for CSE graduates and a need to expand CSE educational offerings. This need includes CSE programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as continuing education and professional development programs, exploiting the synergy between computational science and data science. Yet, as institutions consider new and evolving educational programs, it is essential to consider the broader research challenges and opportunities that provide the context for CSE education and workforce development

Challenges and Opportunities for the Advancement of GIS Education in TANZANIA

Rapid developments in science and technology have driven utilization of Geographical Information Science (GIS) in various fields of Planning, Management, and exploitation of environmental resources and provision of social services. As information technology gains momentum, GIS uses information science infrastructure to address the problems of geography, cartography, geosciences locations and related branches of science and engineering; that is shortly referred to as Geo-informatics. Increased application of GIS calls for more demand of advanced Geo-informatics education worldwide. This study has established major challenges for the advancement of Geo-informatics education in Tanzania and any possible opportunities which can be utilized for the improvement of the same. Prominent challenges identified could be associated with lack of reliable power, internet connection, computer system and accessories and appropriate software. Other challenges were related to the nature of the school curriculum and insufficient knowledge and skills of the human resources. Opportunities identified involve available government plans for increasing power supply, increasing mobile phones networks, Tanzania ICT and education and training policy with a major aim of improving ICT education and the competency based school curriculum under implementation. But the government should further support directly or indirectly all efforts by various groups that participate in advancing Geo-informatics education in the country. Keywords: Education, Geo-informatics, Tanzania, GIS, Transfer of Technology IC

Sustainability and Justice: Challenges and Opportunities for an Open STEM Education

Open educational resources, or OER, are teaching materials that reside in the public do-main and are available under an open license. While the creation of high-quality materials and cyberinfrastructure to share these resources is important, OER are much more than static resource repositories. Vibrant OER communities function as collaboration hubs and often include librarians, instructional technologists, instructors, education researchers, funders, open-source software developers, and college administrators. Together, these in-dividuals work as a community to respond to changes in the education landscape, support student learning impacts both in terms of cost savings and student retention, and solve issues related to broadly sharing open resources on the web. This essay provides general information about OER, describes communities developing OER for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, and presents insights about sustainability chal-lenges. The sustainability challenges are organized according to multiple dimensions: cultural and social, economic and financial, and technological and environmental. In addition, OER provide important opportunities to address and promote social justice and open and accessible education philosophies. Knowing more about the OER landscape, sustainability challenges, and educational justice opportunities can help instructors use and contribute to this growing movement to reshape the landscape of undergraduate education

Cooperative learning of requirements engineering through an international educational scenario enabled by the MOY programme

The International Excellence Campus for Higher Education and Research of the Region of Murcia, and the Mediterranean Office for Youth (MOY) programme are new initiatives that offer opportunities for designing educational activities in which can take part international students enrolled in academic degrees at different universities. Besides, a significant rise in distributed and collaborative software development has been observed in recent years (Global Software Development, GSD), which involves space, time and socio-cultural distances and requires new techniques, tools and practices to meet new challenges and opportunities. In addition, poor requirements are one of the most common causes of project failure in any domain. Projects which devote more resources to Requirements Engineering (RE) result in lower costs and lower deviations of their planning. Therefore, the relevance of education and training the future systems and software professionals in RE activities and techniques, in particular in GSD environments, must be stressed. We have conducted an educational innovation activity based on teaching RE in co-located and GSD contexts. This activity has been carried out in the form of an experiment with students. This paper presents the scenario in which this educational activity is framed as well as some preliminary results of this experiment

Peer Assessment in Experiential Learning : Assessing Tacit and Explicit Skills in Agile Software Engineering Capstone Projects

To prepare students for real-life software engineering projects, many higher-education institutions offer courses that simulate working life to varying degrees. As software engineering requires not only technical, but also inter- and intrapersonal skills, these skills should also be assessed. Assessing soft skills is challenging, especially when project-based and experiential learning are the primary pedagogical approaches. Previous work suggests that including students in the assessment process can yield a more complete picture of student performance. This paper presents experiences with developing and using a peer assessment framework that provides a 360-degree view on students' project performance. Our framework has been explicitly constructed to accommodate and evaluate tacit skills that are relevant in agile software development. The framework has been evaluated with 18 bachelors- and 11 masters-level capstone projects, totaling 176 students working in self-organized teams. We found that the framework eases teacher workload and allows a more thorough assessment of students' skills. We suggest including self- and peer assessment into software capstone projects alongside other, more traditional schemes like productivity metrics, and discuss challenges and opportunities in defining learning goals for tacit and social skills.Peer reviewe

Developing a Meta-Model for Serious Games in Higher Education

This short paper presents a preliminary meta-model for educational games. A meta-model facilitates the development of high-quality, engaging, educational games because it explicitly ties knowledge requirements, transferable skills and course outcomes to game production. Our meta-model is designed to be transferable across curricula, as it modularizes domain specific bodies of knowledge (BOK), a learning taxonomy (e.g., Bloom\u27s), and skill based challenges. The model situates learning opportunities in a plotline wherein the student-player advances by succeeding against non-player adversaries. Knowledge-based challenges framed by a learning taxonomy develop the transferable skills required by international accreditation standards and provide feedback to both the player and the faculty member. Situating assessment challenges in an immersive game environment makes them more engaging and imaginative than typical on-line tests or assignments. Here, we present our meta-model tailored for educational game development in software engineering education

A software engineering course that promotes entrepreneurship: Insights from a VUCA perspective

In a context of higher volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), engineering education must promote active learning approaches, where the responsibility of learning is focused on students, enhancing their competencies and ability to be competitive in the market. But, such educational strategies encompass many issues, questions and challenges, both for teachers and students. This article presents and discusses the main changes that have been introduced in a course that promotes entrepreneurship in the field of software engineering. The changes were introduced to address two main aims: (1) to provide opportunities for students to experiment new skills, that prepare them to better behave in a VUCA context, and (2) to make the course more efficiently managed. External elements and personal issues complement the intrinsic motivation related to the course on entrepreneurship.This work has been supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/202

Exploring online teaching and learning challenges for the technical and vocational education and training lecturer

This paper explored the challenges lecturers face in teaching through online platforms. Online learning has become increasingly prevalent in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, offering opportunities and challenges for TVET lecturers. The transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to online environments requires lecturers to adapt to the new teaching methods, design engaging content, and navigate digital platforms. The qualitative research gathered data from 35 lecturers out of 60 conveniently and purposefully selected from five engineering campuses at a South African TVET college. Participants were accessible to the researcher and possessed online teaching experiences. Participant observation was used as a data-gathering tool. The study attempts to answer the question: What challenges are lecturers facing during online teaching and learning? The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework for Teacher Knowledge by Koehler and Mishra guided the study. Data were analysed thematically from the identified patterns and themes. The findings revealed technical difficulties like connectivity and software glitches, which disrupted the teaching and learning process. Lecturers grappled with receiving practical online support. The limited interaction and collaboration among students in virtual settings posed additional challenges in maintaining engagement and addressing individual learning needs. Furthermore, access and equity issues hindered students' ability to participate fully due to inadequate technology, internet access, and power outages. To overcome these challenges, the study recommended lecturers continuous professional development in online learning methods and technologies. Addressing the challenges contributes to the successful implementation of online learning in the TVET sector by ensuring quality education and enhancing students' skills and competencies

Exploring The Potential For Scripting With Simulation In Engineering Education – Practical Examples Using Python And Ansys

The ability to use scripting tools to harness the power of complex engineering software is not only critical for research and industry, but also offers opportunities for student learning and development. This paper covers two ways in which undergraduate engineering students have been exposed to Ansys simulation tools to be controlled from Python programs. A pilot series of ‘CodeFests’ have been held in partnership with university engineering departments, offering a fun way for students to engage with Python coding while exploring the power of scripting to optimise or iterate on solutions. These have used the PyMAPDL structural simulation library, leveraging students’ existing understanding of mechanical engineering problems to provide a ‘way in’. Students tackled simple mechanical challenges, but with a twist – such as an optimisation requirement which would be beyond manual ability to solve in the time available. In parallel, the potential for scripting tools to provide ‘lab in a box’ type experiences harnessing the most powerful simulation tools has been investigated. A basic prototype to replicate a fluids lab exercise involving a cylinder in a wind tunnel was created inside a Jupyter Lab running Ansys Fluent through the PyFluent library. This provided a simple, customizable way for students to interact with a ‘lab’ powered by simulation, without needing to teach them the Ansys Fluent interface and controls first. Both these projects show the potential for harnessing simulation power further in engineering education through scripting methods, to engage and empower the engineers of tomorrow