The snowflake effect: the future of mashups and learning

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring web mashups and their potential for educatio

Effectiveness of Elicitation Techniques in Distributed Requirements Engineering

Software development teams are often geographically distributed from their customers and end users. This creates significant communication and coordination challenges that impact the effectiveness of requirements engineering. Travel costs, and the local availability of quality technical staff increase the demand for effective distributed software development teams. This research reports an empirical study of how groupware can be used to aid distributed requirements engineering for a software development project. Six groups of seven to nine members were formed and divided into separate remote groups of customers and engineers. The engineers conducted a requirements analysis and produced a software requirements specification (SRS) document through distributed interaction with the remote customers. We present results and conclusions from the research including: an analysis of factors that effected the quality of the Software Requirements Specification document written at the conclusion of the requirements process and the effectiveness of requirements elicitation techniques which were used in a distributed setting for requirements gathering

Understanding Cognition Across Modalities for the Assessment of Digital Resources

Drawing from the theories of the cognitive process, this paper explores the transmission, retention and transformation of information across oral, written, and digital modes of communication and how these concepts can be used to examine the assessment of digital resource tools. The exploration of interactions across modes of communication is used to gain an understanding of the interaction between the student, digital resource and teacher. Cognitive theory is considered as a basis for the assessment of digital resource tools. Lastly, principles for the assessment of digital resource tools are presented along with how assessment can be incorporated in the educational practice to enhance learning in higher education