Guidelines for Documents Produced by Student Projects in Software Engineering

This technical report provides detailed guidelines for the contents of a minimal set of software development documents, tailored for use by students in software engineering projects, and based on IEEE standards, as described in technical report NUIM-CS-TR2002-05 [3]. It is intended to be read along with that report, and used to assist in determining the exact contents of each section

Guidelines for Documents Produced by Student Projects in Software Engineering

This technical report provides detailed guidelines for the contents of a minimal set of software development documents, tailored for use by students in software engineering projects, and based on IEEE standards, as described in technical report NUIM-CS-TR2002-05 [3]. It is intended to be read along with that report, and used to assist in determining the exact contents of each section

Software Engineering meets Problem-based Learning

A problem-driven approach for teaching software engineering to undergraduate students is entering its third year at the Department of Computer Science at NUI, Maynooth

Documents for Student Projects in Software Engineering

This technical report outlines a set of software development documents, tailored for use by students in software engineering projects. It is based on IEEE standards and, in general, IEEE terms and abbreviations have been used to provide exposure to professional terminology. This is a revised version of the document templates and guidelines described in technical reports NUIM-CS-TR2002-5 and NUIM-CSTR2002- 6. In this report the contents have been consolidated and the guidelines condensed to reflect experience with the previously defined document templates. The titles of each document are now preceded by the word educational to distinguish them from the actual IEEE documents from which the document titles are derived

Document Templates for Student Projects in Software Engineering.

This technical report outlines the contents of a minimal set of software development documents, tailored for use by students in software engineering projects, and firmly based on IEEE standards. The document set is designed to support software development activities. It provides a framework for use in undergraduate software engineering projects, both individual and team-based, that helps students to learn best practice. A supplementary report describes the content of each document in more detail

PBL Applied to Software Engineering Group Projects

This paper describes the application of Problem-based learning (PBL) to the design and implementation of an E-commerce web site by small groups of software engineering students. This work is part of a real-world software engineering course, taught to pre-internship students. The use of PBL has gained significant interest since its inception in the late 1950's, and its later adaptation to small team-based learning in the early 1960s. By combining the PBL paradigm along with the experience of teaching a 'traditional' software engineering course, and by analyzing feedback from industry, a course, which we believe provides students with new insights into real-world software engineering projects, has been developed. Initially students were formed into teams of 4 or 5 members based on the weak-strong selection technique. The course began with team-building activities, after which the E-commerce project proposal was presented to the teams. The teams were given complete autonomy over their software development strategies but they were required to work with the clients (mentors) to elicit the project requirements and specifications. Emphasis was placed on the methodology employed (the 'how') rather than on the end product (the 'what'). Assessment of the students focused on three main areas, in keeping with the PBL paradigm. Firstly, implementation skills were assessed by examining the final product and documentation provided by the teams. Secondly, teamwork and leadership skills were evaluated through the use of short anonymous self-assessment and team-assessment questionnaires, as well as by their demonstrated ability to organize meetings and manage their team skills. Finally, analytical thinking and inter-personal skills were evaluated through personal journals and a detailed group presentation. The journals outlined their journey through the learning process and demonstrated their ability to identify and analyze critical variables in the development cycle. The presentation was followed by hard-hitting questions based on Bloom's taxonomy from the faculty staff members. This paper details all aspects of the course development and execution and concludes with an evaluation of PBL and its application to software engineering education

An assessment strategy to determine learning outcomes in a software engineering problem-based learning course

This paper briefly explores the role of experiential learning in software engineering education, focusing on Problem-based Learning. An existing assessment strategy for grading individual students in a small group Problem-based Learning setting is described. Although the student grades obtained may be a reflection of the course success, and standard questionnaires are also employed to monitor student feedback, the authors devised a method to determine how the students themselves perceive the success of the course in terms of their own learning outcomes. As well as complementing the existing assessment strategy, this would allow them to evaluate the possibility of integrating student self-assessment into the overall assessment strategy and would act as a valuable feedback mechanism in fine-tuning the course. The results indicate that students perceive a marked increase in their knowledge as defined by the course curriculum. In addition, there is a significant difference between how course facilitators grade the students and how the students rate their own knowledge. Interestingly, no obvious correlation was found between the academic results of the students at the end of the previous year and their subsequent results in the Problem-based Learning course

On network latency in distributed interactive applications

This paper has three objectives. Firstly it describes the historical development of Distributed Interactive Applications. It then defines network latency. Finally it describes a new approach to masking network latency in Distributed Interactive Applications called the strategy model approach. This approach derives from the on-going PhD studies of one of the authors. A software application to gather strategy data from users is described in detail and an example of deriving a user strategy is given

On Consistency and Network Latency in Distributed Interactive Applications: A Survey—Part I

This paper is the first part of a two-part paper that documents a detailed survey of the research carried out on consistency and latency in distributed interactive applications (DIAs) in recent decades. Part I reviews the terminology associated with DIAs and offers definitions for consistency and latency. Related issues such as jitter and fidelity are also discussed. Furthermore, the various consistency maintenance mechanisms that researchers have used to improve consistency and reduce latency effects are considered. These mechanisms are grouped into one of three categories, namely time management, Information management and system architectural management. This paper presents the techniques associated with the time management category. Examples of such mechanisms include time warp, lock step synchronisation and predictive time management. The remaining two categories are presented in part two of the survey

A Novel Convergence Algorithm for the Hybrid Strategy Model Packet Reduction Technique

Several approaches exist for maintaining consistency in Distributed Interactive Applications. Among these are techniques such as dead reckoning which use prediction algorithms to approximate actual user behaviour and thus reduce the number of update packets required to maintain spatial consistency. The Hybrid Strategy Model operates in a similar way, exploiting long-term patterns in user behaviour whenever possible. Otherwise it simply adopts a short-term model. A major problem with these techniques is the reconstruction of the local behaviour at a remote node. Using the modelled dynamics directly can result in unnatural and sudden jumps in position where updates occur. Convergence algorithms are thus required to smoothly reconstruct remote behaviour from discontinuous samples of the actual local behaviour. This paper makes two important contributions. Primarily, it proposes a novel convergence approach for the Hybrid Strategy Model. Secondly, and more fundamentally, it exposes a lack of suitable and quantifiable measures of different convergence techniques. In this paper the standard smoothing algorithm employed by DIS is used as a benchmark for comparison purposes