Understanding requirements engineering process: a challenge for practice and education

Reviews of the state of the professional practice in Requirements Engineering (RE) stress that the RE process is both complex and hard to describe, and suggest there is a significant difference between competent and "approved" practice. "Approved" practice is reflected by (in all likelihood, in fact, has its genesis in) RE education, so that the knowledge and skills taught to students do not match the knowledge and skills required and applied by competent practitioners. A new understanding of the RE process has emerged from our recent study. RE is revealed as inherently creative, involving cycles of building and major reconstruction of the models developed, significantly different from the systematic and smoothly incremental process generally described in the literature. The process is better characterised as highly creative, opportunistic and insight driven. This mismatch between approved and actual practice provides a challenge to RE education - RE requires insight and creativity as well as technical knowledge. Traditional learning models applied to RE focus, however, on notation and prescribed processes acquired through repetition. We argue that traditional learning models fail to support the learning required for RE and propose both a new model based on cognitive flexibility and a framework for RE education to support this model

Plug-in Electric Drive Vehicles: Experiences in Research and Education

This paper briefly describes the research and educational activities related to a current NSF CAREER grant titled Vehicle Fleet as a Distributed Energy Storage System for the Power Grid . The PI, Dr. Ferdowsi, is an assistant professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST)

Technology Solutions for Developmental Math: An Overview of Current and Emerging Practices

Reviews current practices in and strategies for incorporating innovative technology into the teaching of remedial math at the college level. Outlines challenges, emerging trends, and ways to combine technology with new concepts of instructional strategy

Inclusion of an Introduction to Infrastructure Course in a Civil and Environmental Engineering Curriculum

Civil infrastructure refers to the built environment (sometimes referred to as public works) and consists of roads, bridges, buildings, dams, levees, drinking water treatment facilities, wastewater treatment facilities, power generation and transmission facilities, communications, solid waste facilities, hazardous waste facilities, and other sectors. Although there is a need to train engineers who have a holistic view of infrastructure, there is evidence that civil and environmental engineering (CEE) programs have not fully addressed this increasingly recognized need. One effective approach to address this educational gap is to incorporate a course related to infrastructure into the curriculum for first-year or second-year civil and environmental engineering students. Therefore, this study assesses the current status of teaching such courses in the United States and identifies the incentives for, and the barriers against, incorporating an introduction to infrastructure course into schools’ current CEE curricula. Two distinct activities enabled these objectives. First, a questionnaire was distributed to CEE programs across the United States, to which 33 responses were received. The results indicated that although the majority of participants believe that offering such a course will benefit students by increasing the breadth of the curriculum and by providing a holistic view of CEE, barriers such as the maximum allowable credits for graduation, the lack of motivation within a department—either because such a course did not have a champion or because the department had no plans to revise their curriculum—and a lack of expertise among faculty members inhibited inclusion of the course in curricula. Second, three case studies demonstrating successful inclusion of an introduction to infrastructure course into the CEE curriculum were evaluated. Cases were collected from Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, and West Point CEE programs, and it was found that the key to success in including such a course is a motivated team of faculty members who are committed to educating students about different aspects of infrastructure. The results of the study can be used as a road map to help universities successfully incorporate an introduction to infrastructure course in their CEE programs

Cirquent calculus deepened

Cirquent calculus is a new proof-theoretic and semantic framework, whose main distinguishing feature is being based on circuits, as opposed to the more traditional approaches that deal with tree-like objects such as formulas or sequents. Among its advantages are greater efficiency, flexibility and expressiveness. This paper presents a detailed elaboration of a deep-inference cirquent logic, which is naturally and inherently resource conscious. It shows that classical logic, both syntactically and semantically, is just a special, conservative fragment of this more general and, in a sense, more basic logic -- the logic of resources in the form of cirquent calculus. The reader will find various arguments in favor of switching to the new framework, such as arguments showing the insufficiency of the expressive power of linear logic or other formula-based approaches to developing resource logics, exponential improvements over the traditional approaches in both representational and proof complexities offered by cirquent calculus, and more. Among the main purposes of this paper is to provide an introductory-style starting point for what, as the author wishes to hope, might have a chance to become a new line of research in proof theory -- a proof theory based on circuits instead of formulas.Comment: Significant improvements over the previous version

A First Course in Statistics for Computer Engineering Undergraduate Students

The Polytechnic University of Valencia (PUV) in Spain, has a special School of Engineering in Computer Science. The school offers a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering. A first service course in statistics is a compulsory subject for students in the first semester of the degree. This paper looks at the background behind the course, describes its contents and structure, and presents the assessment methods and results. Statistical education for computer engineers tries to give them a solid foundation in statistics. An emphasis is placed on mastering a wide use of statistical methods in order to allow the students to apply these techniques in many fields of computer science. About 400 students enroll each year in the subject. Basic knowledge is important, but not more important than creating in the student a positive attitude towards statistical methods.Capilla, C. (2014). A First Course in Statistics for Computer Engineering Undergraduate Students. IATED. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/72850

The impact of national ICT qualification systems on companies' recruitment practices : an Anglo-German comparison

"The aim of this study is to analyse and assess the contrasting national skills policies associated with ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) skill supply in Britain and Germany. We also aim to examine the impact of these strategies on firms and to assess the utilization of skills at different qualification levels in companies. Finally we point to possible implications for companies, young people and educational institutions of a change in German higher education to the Bachelor degree. The study is based on published statistical sources and on interviews with some 90 firms in Britain and Germany. These were drawn from four sectors, financial services, retailing, motor manufacture and software development." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information Kurzfassung (deutsch) Executive summary (English)Finanzwirtschaft, Handel, Automobilindustrie, Informationswirtschaft, Betrieb, Personalpolitik, Personaleinstellung - internationaler Vergleich, Informatiker, Fachkräfte, Hochqualifizierte, informationstechnische Bildung, Hochschulbildung, Hochschulsystem - Reform, Bachelor, Berufsbildungssystem, Bildungsökonomie, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Großbritannien