End-user storytelling with a CIDOC CRM - based semantic wiki

International audienceThis paper presents the current state of an experiment intended to use the CIDOC CRM as a knowledge representation language. STEM freshers freely constitute groups of 2 to 4 members and choose a theme; groups have to model, structure, write and present a story within a web-hosted semantic wiki. The main part of the CIDOC CRM is used as an ontological core where students are hanging up classes and properties of the domain related to the story. The hypothesis is made that once the entry ticket has been paid, the CRM guides the end-user in a fairly natural manner for reading - and writing - the story. The intermediary assessment of the wikis allowed us to detect confusion between immaterial work and (physical) realisation of the work; and difficulty in having event-centred modelling. Final assessment results are satisfactory but may be improved. Some groups did not acquire modelling abilities - although this is a central issue in a semantic web course. Results also indicate that the scope of the course (semantic web) is somewhat too ambitious. This experience was performed in order to attract students to computer science studies but it did not produce the expected results. It did however succeed in arousing student interest, and it may contribute to the dissemination of ontologies and to making CIDOC CRM widespread

Installer un suivi personnel de compétences dans une formation en ingénierie du logiciel

International audienceLes diplômes sont assortis de suppléments incluant les compétences visées par la formation et les capacités et savoir-faire acquis. Ces objectifs de compétences se structurent dans un modèle de compétence qui peut être établi comme objectif de formation. Le dispositif d'apprentissage de l'ingénierie du logiciel par immersion s'organise autour d'une année passée dans une entreprise virtuelle, sans cours traditionnels, lors de laquelle les étudiant(e)s travaillent en équipe et dans les règles de l'art pour concevoir et réaliser un système d'information sous le tutorat d'un professionnel expérimenté. Le modèle de compétences de la formation (3 domaines, 14 activités, 48 capacités et 11 compétences transversales) sert de référence pour le positionnement régulier par chaque élève d'un niveau de maturité dans chaque capacité ou compétence transversale. L'outillage de ce suivi par le logiciel eComp@s offre de nouvelles perspectives de supervision et de pilotage des apprentissages tant pour le tuteur que pour l'élève qui se voit doté-e d'un instrument favorisant la pratique réflexive

Cultural immersion aimed at improving professional integration in the Moroccan offshore industry

International audienceA young offshore software industry has grown up in Morocco. A network of 9 universities has set up two schemes promoting mobility towards France, strongly governed by the principle of driving skills gained back to Moroccan economic development. Academic objectives are related to software development and offshoring. A proportion of its success results from extra-academic factors: student selection, student support, internship supervision dedicated to a pre-employment in Moroccan companies. In all of these aspects, the University of Brest is acting as a hub between the various stakeholders, and its role could be compared to a placement agency, perhaps beyond the scope of its usual missions

EUGENE: a STEP-based framework to build Application Generators

International audienceApplications generators translate specifications into products. We defined a method inspired of the STEP standardization process, and its implementation with EUGENE. The goal is to build a meta-model close to the target product, formally derived from others meta-models. Template are then applied to this meta-model. As benefits of this method, the final meta-model offers a higher abstraction of the generation process, and the complexity of code templates is greatly reduced

Ingénierie du logiciel par immersion: allers-retours entre apprendre et faire

International audienc

An experience of young software engineers' employability in the Moroccan offshore industry

International audienceLast few years, French customers' demand for relocation of part of IT projects has allowed the emergence of an offshore software development industry in Morocco. A network of eight Moroccan universities and the University of Brest has set up a mobility scheme for Moroccan Master students. The OTI programme "Offshoring des Technologies de l'Information" is governed by the strong principle of driving skilled young engineers to the benefit of Morocco economic development. Education in Morocco and France is specialized on the issue of software development. The mobility scheme should help to reduce the socio-cultural distance that is inherent to offshore software projects. Without neglecting the need of the good quality of academic education, the programme success relies also on complementary actions: students' selection in Morocco; welcome and support in France; search, placement and follow-up of internships in France with pre-employment in Morocco. This article presents original points of the programme and an evaluation using criteria related to students' needs, business demand and institutions requirements

Paths and shortcuts in an event-oriented ontology

International audienceThe CIDOC CRM is an event-oriented ontology used in cultural heritage documentation. Events are temporal entities that are used as hooks for relating persistent entities. However end-users are relating persistent entities in a direct manner (e.g. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Bilbo the Hobbit) and skip the path through a temporal entity. Fauconnier and Turner suggest that human conscious thinking tends to compress complex paths into simpler relationships, despite still knowing subconsciously about the complete paths. This paper presents two prototypical approaches yielding compression and decompression to the end-user, shortcuts implementation in Semantic Media Wiki and ontology path features in the WissKI system. Lessons learned yield research perspectives about identification, names, end-user usability, and event pattern heuristics

Equipping Software Engineering Apprentices with a Repertoire of Practices

International audienceArgyris and Schön distinguish espoused theories - those which people speak about - from theory-in-use - those which can be inferred from action. In small software teams, developing reflective thinking about action is a vital necessity in coping with change. We address these issues in a Masters of Software Engineering, performed with an alternation between university and industry. University periods are dedicated to a long-term project performed in a reflective practicum. It aims to develop a repertoire of practices which helps young engineers deal with the 'messiness' of situations. Such a practicum provides students, working in groups, with the possibility of reflecting on action. We propose using the Course-of-Action framework to record observable aspects of the actor's activity into semantic wikis. Two hypotheses are discussed (1) self-analysis and self-assessment help to reveal theories-in-use; (2) the Course-of-Action observatory helps maintain awareness of the repertoire. A case study of a 6-apprentice team illustrates the observatory use and the reconstruction of apprentices' activity. Primary conclusions are that self-observation and self-analysis of a software engineer's activity help raise awareness of the initial structure of the repertoire. We are however unable to conclude that it helps reveal their theory-in-use (w

A few elements in software development engineering education

International audienceBrest University offers the software engineering by immersion paradigm as an alternative to other education systems. The idea is that students follow through a project from A to Z, relying on an ISO9001 quality management system alongside methods and tools associated with present n-tier architecture - but under apprenticeship conditions. Software engineering activities are structured around three main processes: Development Engineering, Project Management, and Development Support. Focussing on Development Engineering, we report on certain challenges and difficulties, illustrated on a real-scale project

Introducing Problem-Based Learning in a Joint Masters Degree: Offshoring Information Technologies

International audienceA young offshore software industry has grown up in Morocco. The University of Brest has set up a network of major software companies and Moroccan universities, providing two mobility schemes towards France. Both schemes include a final internship on the French side of global companies, with pre-employment on the Moroccan side - a successful internship being the key that opens the door to recruitment. Student heterogeneity, and student reluctance to move towards a professional attitude are important barriers to employability. Hence, we redesigned a significant proportion of our technical courses to use a problem-based learning (PBL) approach. The PBL approach is illustrated through drawing parallels with the production of a TV series. Three aspects of the approach are presented: (i) set-up of the studio in which sessions are run, i.e. a real software project, its work products and its software development environment; (ii) pre-production tasks including the screenwriting of problem-based learning scenarios and the procurement of input artefacts; and (iii) acting, i.e. students' interpretation of characters (roles) and teacher direction