Requirements engineering aspects for sustainable eLearning systems

Sustainability in software engineering is about (1) continued functionality and maintainability in changing circumstances, and (2) functionality's effect on the surrounded environment, economic and people. Frequent changes of software requirements negatively affect sustainability of software systems. To reduce the number of requirements' changes and improve sustainability, sustainability requirements have to be considered from the beginning of the requirements engineering stage of software development. Sustainability in requirements engineering has five dimensions including individual, social, technical, economic and environmental dimensions. Most of the existing work analysed only one or two dimensions and ignore the interrelated effects among other dimensions. To address this issue, we selected eLearning systems because they provide comprehensive example to study. This thesis focuses on analysing sustainability requirements of eLearning systems with regard to the five sustainability dimensions. The following studies were performed: (1) identifying theoretically the sustainability requirements of eLearning systems, (2) investigating empirically the sustainability of eLearning systems, (3) constructing a methodology for the analysis and evaluation of sustainability requirements on eLearning systems, and (4) evaluating the constructed methodology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research conducted to investigate sustainability requirements of eLearning systems covering the five sustainability dimensions. Our findings highlighted that (1) technical, economic and environmental sustainability requirements are similar to other software domains, where individual and social sustainability requirements are specific for the domain of eLearning systems, (2) individual and social sustainability requirements need to be carefully considered and analysed together because of the strong correlation, and (3) culture and gender diversity play an important role for sustainability requirements. On this basis, we developed a framework for analysing sustainability requirements of software systems as well as a web-based tool SuSoftPro (the name stands from Software Sustainability Profiling) that allows requirements engineers to: investigate sustainability of software systems based on the systems' requirements, analyse the sustainability dimensions of software systems, measure the sustainability of each individual requirement, visualise analysis results to support decision making towards high-quality software, involve stakeholders to rate their requirements for one or more of the five sustainability dimensions, and manage requirement and stakeholder details easily. We evaluated the SuSoftPro framework through case studies, comparative evaluation and a quantitative questionnaire. Our framework successfully provides a comprehensive view of analysing sustainability requirements to improve the attention to sustainability and allow practitioners to develop sustainable software

Environmental Technology Applications in the Retrofitting of Residential Buildings

The impact of buildings on the environment is nothing short of devastating. In recent years, much attention has been given to creating an environmentally friendly built environment. Nonetheless, it has been levied on new buildings. Residential buildings make up at least 80% of the built environment, most of which were built before any energy efficiency guidelines or regulations were introduced. Retrofitting existing residential buildings is a key yet neglected priority in effecting the transition to an environmentally friendly, sustainable built environment. It is pivotal to reducing a building’s energy consumption while simultaneously improving indoor environmental quality and minimizing harmful emissions. This Special Issue showcases studies investigating applications of environmental technology that is tailored to enhance the sustainable performance of existing residential buildings. It helps to better understand the innovations that have been taking place in retrofitting residential buildings, as well as highlighting many opportunities for future research in this field

Student Expectations: The effect of student background and experience

CONTEXT The perspectives and previous experiences that students bring to their programs of study can affect their approaches to study and the depth of learning that they achieve Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Ramsden, 2003). Graduate outcomes assume the attainment of welldeveloped independent learning skills which can be transferred to the work-place. PURPOSE This 5-year longitudinal study investigates factors influencing students’ approaches to learning in the fields of Engineering, Software Engineering, and Computer Science, at two higher education institutes delivering programs of various levels in Australia and New Zealand. The study aims to track the development of student approaches to learning as they progress through their program. Through increased understanding of students’ approaches, faculty will be better able to design teaching and learning strategies to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. This paper reports on the first stage of the project. APPROACH In August 2017, we ran a pilot of our survey using the Revised Study Process Questionnaire(Biggs, Kember, & Leung, 2001) and including some additional questions related to student demographics and motivation for undertaking their current program of study. Data were analysed to evaluate the usefulness of data collected and to understand the demographics of the student cohort. Over the period of the research, data will be collected using the questionnaire and through focus groups and interviews. RESULTS Participants provided a representative sample, and the data collected was reasonable, allowing the questionnaire design to be confirmed. CONCLUSIONS At this preliminary stage, the study has provided insight into the student demographics at both institutes and identified aspects of students’ modes of engagement with learning. Some areas for improvement of the questionnaire have been identified, which will be implemented for the main body of the study