Software Engineering Education by Example

Based on the old but famous distinction between "in the small" and "in the large" software development, at Nancy Universit\'e, UHP Nancy 1, we experience for a while software engineering education thanks to actual project engineering. This education method has the merit to enable students to discover and to overcome actual problems when faced to a large project which may be conducted by a large development team. The mode of education is a simulation of an actual software engineering project as encountered in "real life\'e" activities

Exploration and practice of talent training mode in Sino-foreign cooperative schools -- taking Software engineering as an example

With the deepening of globalization, Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools plays an important role in China’s higher education. Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools refers to the degree education program set up by Chinese higher education institutions and foreign higher education institutions. This mode of cooperation can not only provide Chinese students with broader learning opportunities and international educational resources, but also promote educational exchanges and cooperation between China and foreign countries. As an important subject in the field of information technology, software engineering has broad employment prospects and development potential, so it has been widely used and promoted in Chinese-foreign cooperative education. This paper will take the software engineering major as an example to explore and practice the talent training model of Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools, aiming to provide reference for other majors and Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools

Model driven product line engineering : core asset and process implications

Reuse is at the heart of major improvements in productivity and quality in Software Engineering. Both Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) are software development paradigms that promote reuse. Specifically, they promote systematic reuse and a departure from craftsmanship towards an industrialization of the software development process. MDE and SPLE have established their benefits separately. Their combination, here called Model Driven Product Line Engineering (MDPLE), gathers together the advantages of both. Nevertheless, this blending requires MDE to be recasted in SPLE terms. This has implications on both the core assets and the software development process. The challenges are twofold: (i) models become central core assets from which products are obtained and (ii) the software development process needs to cater for the changes that SPLE and MDE introduce. This dissertation proposes a solution to the first challenge following a feature oriented approach, with an emphasis on reuse and early detection of inconsistencies. The second part is dedicated to assembly processes, a clear example of the complexity MDPLE introduces in software development processes. This work advocates for a new discipline inside the general software development process, i.e., the Assembly Plan Management, which raises the abstraction level and increases reuse in such processes. Different case studies illustrate the presented ideas.This work was hosted by the University of the Basque Country (Faculty of Computer Sciences). The author enjoyed a doctoral grant from the Basque Goverment under the “Researchers Training Program” during the years 2005 to 2009. The work was was co-supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, and the European Social Fund under contracts WAPO (TIN2005-05610) and MODELINE (TIN2008-06507-C02-01)

Incorporating Web-Based Homework Problems in Engineering Dynamics

We are involved in a project funded by the Department of Education (FIPSE) which focuses on developing interactive software to improve the teaching and learning of engineering statics, dynamics, and mechanics of materials. This paper presents an overview of this project, discusses its objectives, and focuses on one particular aspect of the project.the use of web-based homework problems as assessment tools to evaluate student learning. The overall project includes creating, for all three engineering mechanics courses, the following web-based learning tools: (a) Animated theory modules, using Macromedia.s Flash development software, which display basic theory and example problems in an engaging, clear, and concise way; (b) Conceptual quizzes to evaluate student understanding of the theory; (c) Web-based homework problems to assess students. quantitative skills; (d) Other media elements, including streaming video mini-lectures over key topics, and video of real mechanisms and examples. The paper will give examples of web-based homework used in dynamics, discuss aspects of creating and using these, and give some results of student feedback from using these problems

Tackling Engineering Education Research Challenges: Web 2.0 Social Software for Personal Learning

This paper focuses on Engineering Education Research on Technology Enhanced Learning carried out at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), and on its current focus on personal and collaborative learning. After some thoughts on the distinctive nature of Engineering Education Research, the interplay between engineering education practice and professional engineering practice is analyzed. In particular, it is demonstrated how the actual engineering practice of the faculty members influenced the acceptance and the success of new learning approaches and solutions. Finally, the impact on the current Web 2.0 paradigm is discussed and illustrated with the example of project-based collaborative learning activities supported by innovative social software that can be considered as a Personal Learning Environment. A vision of how to shape and exploit personal learning environments to tackle engineering education research challenges is also presented; this deals especially with the importance of user-driven recommendation mechanisms relying of proper trust models

Global synchronization for delayed complex networks with randomly occurring nonlinearities and multiple stochastic disturbances

This is the post print version of the article. The official published version can be obained from the link - Copyright 2009 IOP Publishing LtdThis paper is concerned with the synchronization problem for a new class of continuous time delayed complex networks with stochastic nonlinearities (randomly occurring nonlinearities), interval time-varying delays, unbounded distributed delays as well as multiple stochastic disturbances. The stochastic nonlinearities and multiple stochastic disturbances are investigated here in order to reflect more realistic dynamical behaviors of the complex networks that are affected by the noisy environment. By utilizing a new matrix functional with the idea of partitioning the lower bound h1 of the time-varying delay, we employ the stochastic analysis techniques and the properties of the Kronecker product to establish delay-dependent synchronization criteria that ensure the globally asymptotically mean-square synchronization of the addressed stochastic delayed complex networks. The sufficient conditions obtained are in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) whose solutions can be readily solved by using the standard numerical software. A numerical example is exploited to show the applicability of the proposed results.This work was supported in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK under Grant GR/S27658/01, an International Joint Project sponsored by the Royal Society of the UK, the National 973 Program of China under Grant 2009CB320600, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 60804028, the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education for New Teachers under Grant 200802861044, the Teaching and Research Fund for Excellent Young Teachers at Southeast University of China, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Software Engineering Guidelines - From Theory to Practice

Research software is mainly developed by scientists who are domain experts. Most of them have no specific education in software development. To support research scientists at the German Aerospace Center, we created a set of software engineering guidelines for different fields of software development. At RSE17, we already presented the concept of the guidelines. This time, we want to share the practical experiences we collected over the last year. In this talk, we want to practically introduce the guidelines and the classification scheme. Particularly, we demonstrate their usage in context of two real-world research software applications. The first example demonstrates the usage of the guidelines when starting a new software development. In this case the focus is on finding the initial steps and getting an overview of future aspects. The second example is about an existing, legacy software application. In this case the focus is on analyzing what is already there and finding out the next suitable steps. In this context, the accompanying checklists function as an ongoing planning document and the classification scheme helps to find the suitable starting point

Artificial intelligence in steam cracking modeling : a deep learning algorithm for detailed effluent prediction

Chemical processes can benefit tremendously from fast and accurate effluent composition prediction for plant design, control, and optimization. The Industry 4.0 revolution claims that by introducing machine learning into these fields, substantial economic and environmental gains can be achieved. The bottleneck for high-frequency optimization and process control is often the time necessary to perform the required detailed analyses of, for example, feed and product. To resolve these issues, a framework of four deep learning artificial neural networks (DL ANNs) has been developed for the largest chemicals production process-steam cracking. The proposed methodology allows both a detailed characterization of a naphtha feedstock and a detailed composition of the steam cracker effluent to be determined, based on a limited number of commercial naphtha indices and rapidly accessible process characteristics. The detailed characterization of a naphtha is predicted from three points on the boiling curve and paraffins, iso-paraffins, olefins, naphthenes, and aronatics (PIONA) characterization. If unavailable, the boiling points are also estimated. Even with estimated boiling points, the developed DL ANN outperforms several established methods such as maximization of Shannon entropy and traditional ANNs. For feedstock reconstruction, a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.3 wt% is achieved on the test set, while the MAE of the effluent prediction is 0.1 wt%. When combining all networks-using the output of the previous as input to the next-the effluent MAE increases to 0.19 wt%. In addition to the high accuracy of the networks, a major benefit is the negligible computational cost required to obtain the predictions. On a standard Intel i7 processor, predictions are made in the order of milliseconds. Commercial software such as COILSIM1D performs slightly better in terms of accuracy, but the required central processing unit time per reaction is in the order of seconds. This tremendous speed-up and minimal accuracy loss make the presented framework highly suitable for the continuous monitoring of difficult-to-access process parameters and for the envisioned, high-frequency real-time optimization (RTO) strategy or process control. Nevertheless, the lack of a fundamental basis implies that fundamental understanding is almost completely lost, which is not always well-accepted by the engineering community. In addition, the performance of the developed networks drops significantly for naphthas that are highly dissimilar to those in the training set. (C) 2019 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press Limited Company

University-private sector partnerships:assessing long-term collaboration to deliver economic impact in the Northwest of England

Objectives Private and public sector working together for mutual benefit is nothing new and in the context of education, this has historically focussed on areas such as employability-related experiences for students, supply-chains for goods and services, and within higher education specifically, the growing need to demonstrate research impact. In this presentation, we explore the impact of private and public-sector working together to deliver regional economic growth through technology transfer. The objectives of this research stems from a twelve-year collaborative relationship between a higher education institute (HEI) and a private sector, technology value-added reseller (VAR). The authors assess and reflect on this activity, funded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to help understand the inputs, processes and outcomes of that relationship. Approach / Methodology The approach undertaken was firstly to identify the ERDF-funded projects since 2002 that the VAR (Quadra Solutions Ltd) has been a part of, as a private sector partner, with the HEI (Lancaster University’s Engineering Department). This is defined as where there is a service level agreement in place and the provision of match-funding is committed-to in that contract. This differs from that of a sub-contractor where the relationship may be better defined as purchaser-supplier and emphasizes the collaborative nature of the relationship being explored. We subsequently identified the ‘interventions’ in which both the knowledge exchange team (Lancaster Product Development Unit) and Quadra Solutions Ltd had worked with a ‘beneficiary’ as part of those ERDF initiatives. Retaining confidential information, these interventions were aggregated and basic company information collected in terms of location, size (by turnover) and sector. Analysis was then undertaken on the results collected as a consequence of that intervention, based on the following economic key performance indicators (KPIs): businesses improving performance; safeguarding of jobs; and the creation of new jobs. Qualitative reflection was carried out to assess wider impacts of the relationship and the development of a model that articulates this way of working. We highlight both the benefits and drawbacks based on extensive experience of providing technology-transfer solutions to SMEs, part-funded by ERDF. Results The results show that 93 interventions have been undertaken between Lancaster University’s Engineering Department and Quadra Solutions Ltd, in-part funded by ERDF between 2003 and 2015, spanning seven major projects. All of these interventions supported technology transfer by the introduction of a new or enhanced design process within the beneficiary, using the Autodesk family of software. All beneficiaries receiving support were SMEs, complying with national and regional eligibility guidelines as defined by the funding body secretariat. Sectoral breakdown unsurprisingly shows that the vast majority were in the engineering/manufacturing sector, accounting for 94.6% of the total. Of those SMEs that were assisted, all received increased functionality via the introduction or improvement to design software than that previously being used, demonstrating clear technology transfer. Where data was obtained, this intervention led to the cumulative safeguarding of 102.1 jobs and the creation of 71 jobs. As noted elsewhere, there is considerable ambiguity in using figures that attempt to provide a unit cost per result, and whilst one can attempt to draw comparison with other initiatives in other areas, this can be problematic due to assumptions made. For the purposes of this investigation, we have benchmarked against ourselves and show that for all cumulative ERDF assistance provided by the Engineering Department, the average job created per intervention is 0.64 and the average job safeguarded is 0.91. For the technology transfer work carried out in partnership with Quadra Solutions Ltd, the figures are 0.76 and 1.10, respectively. More widely, there are other impacts from joint collaboration with private sector partners that have been created, for the HEI: • Clear access to the latest in engineering design functionality, informed by globally-operating OEMs spanning many sectors; • Provision of a match-funding contribution through the time of company representatives contributing towards the objectives of the project; • Sharing of a networks of users and manufactures in close proximity, with a ‘seal-of-approval’ for quality of work; • Local, regional, national and international market intelligence; • Formalisation in the pursuit of similar objectives; • Contribution to the state-of-the-art and hence vital commercial-sector input to other future programmes of business support. The benefits created by such a relationship for private sector partners include: • Promotion of joint-funding opportunities to potential beneficiaries generating in-house advocates, or ‘funding champions’; • Ability to join-up wider business-support allied to technology transfer, which may include time-bound financial incentives, training offers, subscriptions, hardware support and so on. • Increased knowledge and experience of public-funding processes, regulations and conditions; • Externally-visible partnerships with a world-ranked university. Arguably the most important benefits relate to the end-user, which in this case is the beneficiary. The following model outlines a typical journey taken by a beneficiary through the technology acquisition route of intervention. Additional benefits to the beneficiaries in these cases may include: • Increased ability to develop new products • Awareness of how new technology processes can be further exploited, such as through expansion, training, add-ons; • A route into higher education to explore other research and development opportunities that may exist beyond that of the intervention; Implications and Recommendations The authors fully accept that there are a number of issues with the data collected which include that our assessment methods: • Only take account of the reported results when/if engaged with the beneficiary. Some beneficiaries become reluctant to undertake evaluation after the assistance has been delivered. • It does not record the exact time input to each intervention made by either the HEI or the VAR. • The package of support (or agreed solution) has not been specified and will include some differences, in this case in software, including for example upgrades or new packages. Notwithstanding some of the limitations outlined above, we have been able to demonstrate that the work carried-out by the partnership of a private sector VAR and an HEI to support SMEs in technology transfer has clear, demonstrable impact, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Such a model can be applied to future initiatives that have technology transfer as a theme within business support. Areas for development / future research There are a number of important areas underpinned by this work that would be useful to explore further: • Sector transference, for example application in other disciplines requiring software, such as for example architecture, construction, chemicals, food and drink, creative. • Technology transference, for example application of using other technologies beyond software, such as for example, manufacturing hardware. • Longer-term assessment of the impact to beneficiaries of these interventions, which may include aspects related to innovation culture, new product development or increased capacity for R&D. • Exploration of opportunities that may be available beyond the intervention provided, by the HEI, such as access to graduates, and the ‘completion of the circle’