Improving the Discoverability of Interactions in Interactive Systems

International audienc

Collaborative yet independent: Information practices in the physical sciences

In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data. This report details seven case studies in the physical sciences. For each case, qualitative interviews and focus groups were used to understand the domain. Quantitative data gathered from a survey of participants highlights different information strategies employed across the cases, and identifies important software used for research. Finally, conclusions from across the cases are drawn, and recommendations are made. This report is the third in a series commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific domain (life sciences, humanities, and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies

The Example Guru: Suggesting Examples to Novice Programmers in an Artifact-Based Context

Programmers in artifact-based contexts could likely benefit from skills that they do not realize exist. We define artifact-based contexts as contexts where programmers have a goal project, like an application or game, which they must figure out how to accomplish and can change along the way. Artifact-based contexts do not have quantifiable goal states, like the solution to a puzzle or the resolution of a bug in task-based contexts. Currently, programmers in artifact-based contexts have to seek out information, but may be unaware of useful information or choose not to seek out new skills. This is especially problematic for young novice programmers in blocks programming environments. Blocks programming environments often lack even minimal in-context support, such as auto-complete or in-context documentation. Novices programming independently in these blocks-based programming environments often plateau in the programming skills and API methods they use. This work aims to encourage novices in artifact-based programming contexts to explore new API methods and skills. One way to support novices may be with examples, as examples are effective for learning and highly available. In order to better understand how to use examples for supporting novice programmers, I first ran two studies exploring novices\u27 use and focus on example code. I used those results to design a system called the Example Guru. The Example Guru suggests example snippets to novice programmers that contain previously unused API methods or code concepts. Finally, I present an approach for semi-automatically generating content for this type of suggestion system. This approach reduces the amount of expert effort required to create suggestions. This work contains three contributions: 1) a better understanding of difficulties novices have using example code, 2) a system that encourages exploration and use of new programming skills, and 3) an approach for generating content for a suggestion system with less expert effort

Building Web Based Programming Environments for Functional Programming

Functional programming offers an accessible and powerful algebraic model for computing. JavaScript is the language of the ubiquitous Web, but it does not support functional programs well due to its single-threaded, asynchronous nature and lack of rich control flow operators. The purpose of this work is to extend JavaScript to a language environment that satisfies the needs of functional programs on the Web. This extended language environment uses sophisticated control operators to provide an event-driven functional programming model that cooperates with the browser\u27s DOM, along with synchronous access to JavaScript\u27s asynchronous APIs. The results of this work are used toward two projects: (1) a programming environment called WeScheme that runs in the web browser and supports a functional programming curriculum, and (2) a tool-chain called Moby that compiles event-driven functional programs to smartphones, with access to phone-specific features

Good Practice Report : Curriculum Renewal

This good practice report, commissioned by the ALTC, provides a summative evaluation of useful outcomes and good practices from ALTC projects and fellowships on curriculum renewal. The report contains: -a summative evaluation of the good practices and key outcomes for teaching and learning from completed ALTC projects and fellowships -a literature review of the good practices and key outcomes for teaching and learning from national and international research the proposed outcomes and resources for teaching and learning which will be produced by current incomplete ALTC projects and fellowships -identifies areas in which further work or development are appropriate

Software development process mining: discovery, conformance checking and enhancement

Context. Modern software projects require the proper allocation of human, technical and financial resources. Very often, project managers make decisions supported only by their personal experience, intuition or simply by mirroring activities performed by others in similar contexts. Most attempts to avoid such practices use models based on lines of code, cyclomatic complexity or effort estimators, thus commonly supported by software repositories which are known to contain several flaws. Objective. Demonstrate the usefulness of process data and mining methods to enhance the software development practices, by assessing efficiency and unveil unknown process insights, thus contributing to the creation of novel models within the software development analytics realm. Method. We mined the development process fragments of multiple developers in three different scenarios by collecting Integrated Development Environment (IDE) events during their development sessions. Furthermore, we used process and text mining to discovery developers’ workflows and their fingerprints, respectively. Results. We discovered and modeled with good quality developers’ processes during programming sessions based on events extracted from their IDEs. We unveiled insights from coding practices in distinct refactoring tasks, built accurate software complexity forecast models based only on process metrics and setup a method for characterizing coherently developers’ behaviors. The latter may ultimately lead to the creation of a catalog of software development process smells. Conclusions. Our approach is agnostic to programming languages, geographic location or development practices, making it suitable for challenging contexts such as in modern global software development projects using either traditional IDEs or sophisticated low/no code platforms.Contexto. Projetos de software modernos requerem a correta alocação de recursos humanos, técnicos e financeiros. Frequentemente, os gestores de projeto tomam decisões suportadas apenas na sua própria experiência, intuição ou simplesmente espelhando atividades executadas por terceiros em contextos similares. As tentativas para evitar tais práticas baseiam-se em modelos que usam linhas de código, a complexidade ciclomática ou em estimativas de esforço, sendo estes tradicionalmente suportados por repositórios de software conhecidos por conterem várias limitações. Objetivo. Demonstrar a utilidade dos dados de processo e respetivos métodos de análise na melhoria das práticas de desenvolvimento de software, colocando o foco na análise da eficiência e revelando aspetos dos processos até então desconhecidos, contribuindo para a criação de novos modelos no contexto de análises avançadas para o desenvolvimento de software. Método. Explorámos os fragmentos de processo de vários programadores em três cenários diferentes, recolhendo eventos durante as suas sessões de desenvolvimento no IDE. Adicionalmente, usámos métodos de descoberta e análise de processos e texto no sentido de modelar o fluxo de trabalho dos programadores e as suas características individuais, respetivamente. Resultados. Descobrimos e modelámos com boa qualidade os processos dos programadores durante as suas sessões de trabalho, usando eventos provenientes dos seus IDEs. Revelámos factos desconhecidos sobre práticas de refabricação, construímos modelos de previsão da complexidade ciclomática usando apenas métricas de processo e criámos um método para caracterizar coerentemente os comportamentos dos programadores. Este último, pode levar à criação de um catálogo de boas/más práticas no processo de desenvolvimento de software. Conclusões. A nossa abordagem é agnóstica em termos de linguagens de programação, localização geográfica ou prática de desenvolvimento, tornando-a aplicável em contextos complexos tal como em projetos modernos de desenvolvimento global que utilizam tanto os IDEs tradicionais como as atuais e sofisticadas plataformas "low/no code"

Identification and Evaluation of Predictors for Learning Success and of Models for Teaching Computer Programming in Contemporary Contexts

Introductory undergraduate computer programming courses are renowned for higher than average failure and withdrawal rates when compared to other subject areas. The closer partnership between higher education and the rapidly expanding digital technology industry, as demonstrated by the establishment of new Degree Apprenticeships in computer science and digital technologies, requires efficient and effective means for teaching programming skills. This research, therefore, aimed to identify reliable predictors of success in learning programming or vulnerability to failure. The research also aimed to evaluate teaching methods and remedial interventions towards recommending a teaching model that supported and engaged learners in contemporary contexts that were relevant to the workplace. Investigation of qualifications designed to prepare students for undergraduate computer science courses revealed that A-level entrants achieved significantly higher programming grades than BTEC students. However, there was little difference between the grades of those with and those without previous qualifications in computing or ICT subjects. Analysis of engagement metrics revealed a strong correlation between extent of co-operation and programming grade, in contrast to a weak correlation between programming grade and code understanding. Further analysis of video recordings, interviews and observational records distinguished between the type of communication that helped peers comprehend tasks and concepts, and other forms of communication that were only concerned with completing tasks. Following the introduction of periodic assessment, essentially converting a single final assessment to three staged summative assessment points, it was found that failing students often pass only one of the three assignment parts. Furthermore, only 10% of those who failed overall had attempted all three assignments. Reasons for failure were attributed to ‘surface’ motivations (such as regulating efforts to achieve a minimum pass of 40%), ineffective working habits or stressful personal circumstances rather than any fundamental difficulty encountered with subject material. A key contribution to pedagogical practice made by this research is to propose an ‘incremental’ teaching model. This model is informed by educational theory and empirical evidence and comprises short cycles of three activities: presenting new topic information, tasking students with a relevant exercise and then demonstrating and discussing the exercise solution. The effectiveness of this model is evidenced by increased engagement, increased quiz scores at the end of each teaching session and increased retention of code knowledge at the end of the course

Adapting mobile systems using logical mobility primitives

Mobile computing devices, such as personal digital assistants and mobile phones, are becoming increasingly popular, smaller, more capable and even fashionable personal items. Combined with the recent advent of wireless networking techniques, users are equipped with mobile devices of significant computational abilities, which are able to wirelessly access information by dynamically connecting to many different networks. Despite the ubiquity of mobile devices, mobile systems are built using monolithic architectures, use a small set of predefined interaction paradigms and do not exploit or adapt to the dynamicity of their local or remote context. Applications deployed on mobile devices face considerable challenges posed by their changing surroundings. One of the main peculiarities of mobile devices is heterogeneity, which may occur in software, hardware and network protocols. Mobile systems may carry a large number of different applications, use different operating systems and middleware and, often, have more than one network interface. A further challenge is their considerable variation in the computational resources available, such as battery power, CPU speed, network bandwidth and volatile and persistent memory. Moreover, mobile computing systems are highly dynamic systems, in terms of their surroundings, implying that the requirements for applications deployed on a mobile device are a moving target. Changes in the requirements (such as integration with a new service) may require changes to the application. Consequently, these changes may mean that the application behaviour needs to adapt. This thesis argues that the potential of the ubiquity of mobile devices cannot be realised using static and monolithic architectures, as mobile systems need to be able to adapt to accommodate changes to their environment. It investigates the use of three technologies to offer adaptation to mobile devices: Logical mobility techniques, component systems and middleware technologies. More specifically, this thesis presents the SATIN (System Adaptation Targeting Integrated Networks) component metamodel, a lightweight local component metamodel that offers the flexible use of logical mobility primitives. The metamodel is instantiated to build the SATIN middleware system, a component-based mobile computing middleware that uses the mobility primitives exported by the metamodel to reconfigure itself and applications running on top of it. The suitability of SATIN for the creation of adaptable mobile systems is demonstrated, by using it to implement and evaluate a number of applications showing different aspects of adaptation. Moreover, existing projects are reengineered to run as SATIN components, showing the flexibility of the approach and the advantages gained over the originals