Beyond Surveys: Analyzing Software Development Artifacts to Assess Teaching Efforts

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents an approach of using software development artifacts to gauge student behavior and the effectiveness of changes to curriculum design. There is an ongoing need to adapt university courses to changing requirements and shifts in industry. As an educator it is therefore vital to have access to methods, with which to ascertain the effects of curriculum design changes. In this paper, we present our approach of analyzing software repositories in order to gauge student behavior during project work. We evaluate this approach in a case study of a university undergraduate software development course teaching agile development methodologies. Surveys revealed positive attitudes towards the course and the change of employed development methodology from Scrum to Kanban. However, surveys were not usable to ascertain the degree to which students had adapted their workflows and whether they had done so in accordance with course goals. Therefore, we analyzed students' software repository data, which represents information that can be collected by educators to reveal insights into learning successes and detailed student behavior. We analyze the software repositories created during the last five courses, and evaluate differences in workflows between Kanban and Scrum usage

Should I Bug You? Identifying Domain Experts in Software Projects Using Code Complexity Metrics

In any sufficiently complex software system there are experts, having a deeper understanding of parts of the system than others. However, it is not always clear who these experts are and which particular parts of the system they can provide help with. We propose a framework to elicit the expertise of developers and recommend experts by analyzing complexity measures over time. Furthermore, teams can detect those parts of the software for which currently no, or only few experts exist and take preventive actions to keep the collective code knowledge and ownership high. We employed the developed approach at a medium-sized company. The results were evaluated with a survey, comparing the perceived and the computed expertise of developers. We show that aggregated code metrics can be used to identify experts for different software components. The identified experts were rated as acceptable candidates by developers in over 90% of all cases

Practice activity trends among oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Australia

© 2004 Brennan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to describe practice activity trends among oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Australia over time. METHODS: All registered oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Australia were surveyed in 1990 and 2000 using mailed self-complete questionnaires. RESULTS: Data were available from 79 surgeons from 1990 (response rate = 73.8%) and 116 surgeons from 2000 (response rate = 65.1%). The rate of provision of services per visit changed over time with increased rates observed overall (from 1.43 ± 0.05 services per visit in 1990 to 1.66 ± 0.06 services per visit in 2000), reflecting increases in pathology and reconstructive surgery. No change over time was observed in the provision of services per year (4,521 ± 286 services per year in 1990 and 4,503 ± 367 services per year in 2000). Time devoted to work showed no significant change over time (1,682 ± 75 hours per year in 1990 and 1,681 ± 94 hours per year in 2000), while the number of visits per week declined (70 ± 4 visits per week in 1990 to 58 ± 4 visits per week in 2000). CONCLUSIONS: The apparent stability in the volume of services provided per year reflected a counterbalancing of increased services provided per visit and a decrease in the number of visits supplied.David S Brennan, A John Spencer, Kiran A Singh, Dana N Teusner and Alastair N Gos

Design, synthesis, and characterisation of transition-metal dicarboxylate anodes for lithium-ion batteries

Batteries play an increasingly critical role in the functioning of contemporary society. Current battery technology suffers from a number of shortcomings, including use of performance limited, expensive, non-renewable, and toxic materials. To ensure future proofing of battery technology, new materials and methods that overcome the current shortcomings need to be developed. The work in this thesis develops the use of transition-metal dicarboxylates as anode materials for Li ion batteries. A holistic approach to this development was taken, exploring the interdependency of the numerous parameters that affect the overall electrochemical performance. Specifically examined were how the chemical and physical properties of the active material and the electrode formulation impact the nano and microstructure of the electrodes and the mechanism of Li insertion. This project addresses the ambiguity in the organic electrode material (OEM) literature, with regards to the composition of reported dicarboxylic acid electrodes. The reaction between the acid and the copper current collector was considered and characterised, which led to the investigation into and development of the use of the metal-carboxylates. Chapter 1 details the general theory and principles behind batteries, with further exploration into the limitations of current lithium-ion battery technology. Subsequently, OEMs and metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are introduced and explored as emerging electrode materials that present the opportunity to combat some of these limitations. Chapter 2 provides the background theory and principles behind the analytical techniques and instrumentation used in this thesis. These techniques include small and ultra-small angle neutron ii scattering (SANS and USANS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Mossbauer spectroscopy (MBS), nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Techniques not commonly used in battery materials research and development are discussed in detail. Chapter 3 explores the electrochemistry of copper tartrate as a Li ion anode material. Insights into its unusual capacity increase with cycle number and high specific capacity of 744 mAhg-1 were gained through in depth characterisation of the electrode system. It was revealed that the capacity gain was likely related to the activation of electrochemical processes that were delayed due to the nano and microstructure of the electrode, specifically the large particle size distribution of the active material. Subsequently a novel formulation technique utilising the parent acid of copper tartrate, tartaric acid, is employed to improve the electrode nano and microstructure ultimately resulting in superior electrochemical performance. Chapter 4 dives deeper into the novel formulation techniques introduced in Chapter 3, expanding the range of acids, and consequently the range of copper dicarboxylates, that can be utilised. Here, the physical and chemical properties of the acids and the formulation methodology were demonstrated to impact the composition and nano and microstructure of the final electrode. These effects were then correlated to the observed differences in the electrochemical performance, namely, high solubility of the acid in the formulation solvent improved the electrode nano and microstructure, ultimately improving the electrochemical performance. The picture of the composition-structure-performance relationship was subsequently built to an extent that allowed a rational approach to acid and copper selection. Chapter 5 focuses on expanding the transition metal from copper to a wider range of transition-metal dicarboxylates. These were made using the syntheses techniques previously demonstrated. The effects of the electrode nano and microstructure on the electrochemical performance were further explored, which revealed significant correlation between the two. Subsequently, novel formulation techniques were employed to tune the electrode nano and microstructure and hence improve the electrochemical performance. Namely, utilising a formulation solvent that the active material was soluble in to decrease the active material particle size and increase the homogeneity in the electrode. iii This ultimately led to an iron (ii) tartrate electrode that achieved a specific capacity of 870 mAhg-1 Chapter 6 summarises the findings of Chapters 3, 4 and 5. Additionally, several key avenues of future work are discussed, drawing on preliminary results. These include assessment of the suitability of the metal-dicarboxylates for use in sodium ion batteries, further investigation into the mechanism of Li storage of the metal-dicarboxylates, optimisation of the active material loading and optimisation of the metal dicarboxylate syntheses. Overall, this work has resulted in an Australian Provisional Patent 2022902762 and a deeper understanding of the use of metal-dicarboxylates as anode materials for Li ion batteries

The dental labour force in Australia: the position and policy directions

The practice of dentistry in Australia is changing. One substantial change is a decrease in visits per year supplied by dentists. At present dental graduate numbers, there will be a widening gap between the capacity of the dental labour force and the population?s demand for dental visits and services. This publication presents an overview of the aggregate shortage of the dental labour force and considers the policy directions to close the supply-demand gap. While both short-term and long-term directions are presented, the focus is on longer term directions for Australia to develop a sustainable self-sufficiency in its dental labour force.John Spencer, Dana Teusner, Knute Carter and David Brenna

Challenges (and Opportunities!) of a Remote Agile Software Engineering Project Course During COVID-19

COVID-19 and its immediate impacts on teaching activities have required changes from computer science educators worldwide. We switched our on-site courses to remote setups without detailed knowledge of what tools, techniques, and methods would work in different teaching contexts. A growing amount of experience reports on general best practices for remote teaching in higher education are available. However, university courses featuring practical software development projects present unique challenges regarding remote learning, as effective student collaboration is vital. In these courses, students tackle situations in the project and their team meetings that would also occur in real software projects experienced in industry settings. In this paper, we share our experiences on how we successfully adapted our software engineering project course to a remote setup, which challenges we observed in student teams and how they can be mitigated, and what (surprisingly) worked better than expected. Finally, we propose improvements that we expect will be beneficial not only for future remote-only but also for hybrid or on-site courses

What Stays in Mind? - Retention Rates in Programming MOOCs

This work presents insights about the long-term effects and retention rates of knowledge acquired within MOOCs. In 2015 and 2017, we conducted two introductory MOOCs on object-oriented programming in Java with each over 10,000 registered participants. In this paper, we analyze course scores, quiz results and self-stated skill levels of our participants. The aim of our analysis is to uncover factors influencing the retention of acquired knowledge, such as time passed or knowledge application, in order to improve long-term success. While we know that some participants learned the programming basics within our course, we lack information on whether this knowledge was applied and fortified after the course's end. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a survey in 2018 among all participants of our 2015 and 2017 programming MOOCs. The first part of the survey elicits responses on whether and how MOOC knowledge was applied and gives participants opportunity to voice individual feedback. The second part of the survey contains several questions of increasing difficulty and complexity regarding course content in order to learn about the consolidation of the acquired knowledge. We distinguish three programming knowledge areas in the survey: First, understanding of concepts, such as loops and boolean algebra. Second, syntax knowledge, such as specific keywords. Third, practical skills including debugging and coding. We further analyzed the long-term effects separately per participant skill group. While answer rates were low, the collected data shows a decrease of knowledge over time, relatively unaffected by skill level. Application of the acquired knowledge improves the memory retention rates of MOOC participants across all skill levels

Interactive Strategy-Based Validation of Behavioral Models

When behavioral models are derived automatically based on observed stakeholder interactions, requirements engineers need to validate whether the stakeholders agree with the synthesized behavioral models. Allowing stakeholders to experience such models through simulation and animation allows them to comment on, amend to and correct these models. However, to ensure an efficient stakeholder validation, the simulation has to be guided instead of confronting the user with random situations over and over again. In this paper, we present a strategy-driven simulator capable of guiding the execution of behavioral models based on graph transformations. By analyzing either the overall structure of a partial state space (look ahead) or by performing an in-depth analysis of the states therein, the simulator is able to determine which transformations should be executed next to continue on the most promising path through the overall state space. The discussed implementation is illustrated with a case study