Four Opportunities for SE Ethics Education

Many software engineers direct their talents to- wards software systems which do not fall into traditional definitions of safety critical systems, but are integral to society (e.g., social media, expert advisor systems). While codes of ethics can be a useful starting point for ethical discussions, codes are often limited in scope to professional ethics and may not offer answers to individuals weighing competing ethical priorities. In this paper, we present our vision for improving ethics education in software engineering. To do this, we consider current and past curricular recommendations, as well as recent efforts within the broader computer science community. We layout challenges with vignettes and assessments in teaching, and give recommendations for incorporating updated examples and broadening the scope of ethics education in software engineering

Reconstructing the Past: The Case of the Spadina Expressway

In order to build resilient systems that can be operational for a long time, it is important that analysts are able to model the evolution of the requirements of that system. The Evolving Intentions framework models how stakeholders’ goals change over time. In this work, our aim is to validate applicability and effectiveness of this technique on a substantial case. In the absence of ground truth about future evolutions, we used historical data and rational reconstruction to understand how a project evolved in the past. Seeking a well-documented project with varying stakeholder intentions over a substantial period of time, we selected requirements of the Toronto Spadina Expressway. In this paper, we report on the experience and the results of modeling this project over different time periods, which enabled us to assess the modeling and reasoning capabilities of the approach, its support for asking and answering ‘what if’ questions, and the maturity of the underlying tool support. We also demonstrate a novel process for creating time-based models through the construction and merging of scenarios

Towards a General Solution for Layout of Visual Goal Models with Actors: Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for the paper: Towards a General Solution for Layout of Visual Goal Models with Actors This paper presents early results and lays a foundation for discussion within our GORE community

Three Major Instructional Approaches for Requirements Engineering

In this talk, we report on our findings from the paper A Survey of Instructional Approaches in the Requirements Engineering Education Literature [DGT21], which has been accepted at and published in the proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering. The paper reports the findings of a systematic literature review to define and investigate the current state of research on requirements engineering education

A Systematic Literature Review of Requirements Engineering Education

Requirements engineering (RE) has established itself as a core software engineering discipline. It is well acknowledged that good RE leads to higher quality software and considerably reduces the risk of failure or budget-overspending of software development projects. It is of vital importance to train future software engineers in RE and educate future requirements engineers to adequately manage requirements in various projects. To this date, there exists no central concept of what RE education shall comprise. To lay a foundation, we report on a systematic literature review of the feld and provide a systematic map describing the current state of RE education. Doing so allows us to describe how the educational landscape has changed over the last decade. Results show that only a few established author collaborations exist and that RE education research is predominantly published in venues other than the top RE research venues (i.e., in venues other than the RE conference and journal). Key trends in RE instruction of the past decade include involvement of real or realistic stakeholders, teaching predominantly elicitation as an RE activity, and increasing student factors such as motivation or communication skills. Finally, we discuss open opportunities in RE education, such as training for security requirements and supply chain risk management, as well as developing a pedagogical foundation grounded in evidence of effective instructional approaches

Forest Biodiversity Assessment in Peruvian Andean Montane Cloud Forest

Cloud forests are unusual and fragile habitats, being one of the least studied and least understood ecosystems. The tropical Andean dominion is considered one of the most significant places in the world as rega rds biological diversity, with a very high level of endemism. The biodiversity was analysed in an isolated remnant area of a tropical montane cloud forest known as the ?Bosque de Neblina de Cuyas?, in the North of the Peruvian Andean range. Composition, structure and dead wood were measured or estimated. The values obtained were compared with other cloud forests. The study revealed a high level of forest biodiversity, although the level of biodiversity differs from one area to another: in the inner areas, where human pressure is almost inexistent, the biodiversity values increase. The high species richness and the low dominance among species bear testimony to this montane cloud forest as a real enclave of biodiversity

Canagliflozin and renal outcomes in type 2 diabetes and nephropathy

BACKGROUND Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the leading cause of kidney failure worldwide, but few effective long-term treatments are available. In cardiovascular trials of inhibitors of sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2), exploratory results have suggested that such drugs may improve renal outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS In this double-blind, randomized trial, we assigned patients with type 2 diabetes and albuminuric chronic kidney disease to receive canagliflozin, an oral SGLT2 inhibitor, at a dose of 100 mg daily or placebo. All the patients had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of 30 to <90 ml per minute per 1.73 m2 of body-surface area and albuminuria (ratio of albumin [mg] to creatinine [g], >300 to 5000) and were treated with renin–angiotensin system blockade. The primary outcome was a composite of end-stage kidney disease (dialysis, transplantation, or a sustained estimated GFR of <15 ml per minute per 1.73 m2), a doubling of the serum creatinine level, or death from renal or cardiovascular causes. Prespecified secondary outcomes were tested hierarchically. RESULTS The trial was stopped early after a planned interim analysis on the recommendation of the data and safety monitoring committee. At that time, 4401 patients had undergone randomization, with a median follow-up of 2.62 years. The relative risk of the primary outcome was 30% lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group, with event rates of 43.2 and 61.2 per 1000 patient-years, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.59 to 0.82; P=0.00001). The relative risk of the renal-specific composite of end-stage kidney disease, a doubling of the creatinine level, or death from renal causes was lower by 34% (hazard ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.53 to 0.81; P<0.001), and the relative risk of end-stage kidney disease was lower by 32% (hazard ratio, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.86; P=0.002). The canagliflozin group also had a lower risk of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.67 to 0.95; P=0.01) and hospitalization for heart failure (hazard ratio, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.47 to 0.80; P<0.001). There were no significant differences in rates of amputation or fracture. CONCLUSIONS In patients with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease, the risk of kidney failure and cardiovascular events was lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group at a median follow-up of 2.62 years

Evolving Intentions: Support for Modeling and Reasoning about Requirements that Change over Time

In early-phase requirements engineering, modeling stakeholder goals and intentions helps stakeholders understand the problem context and evaluate tradeoffs, by exploring possible "what if" questions. Prior research allows modelers to make evaluation assignments to desired goals and generate possible selections for task and dependency alternatives, but this treats models as static snapshots, where once the evaluation of the fulfillment of an intention is determined, it remains constant. Using these techniques stakeholders are unable to reason about possible evolutions, leaving questions about project viability unanswered when the fulfillment of goals or availability of components is not guaranteed in the future. In this dissertation, we propose Evolving Intentions: a framework for specifying, modeling, and reasoning about goals that change over time, enabling stakeholders to explore model evolution. We present Evolving Intentions in the context of both the i* and Tropos goal modeling languages. We specify a set of functions that define how intentions and relationships evolve, and use simulation strategies for asking a variety of "what if" questions about such changes. We present GrowingLeaf and BloomingLeaf, two web-based goal modeling and analysis tools that implement this technique for iStar and Tropos models, respectively. Using the development of GrowingLeaf as an example, we demonstrate that this technique is effective for debugging goal models and answering stakeholder questions, and show the analysis to be scalable for representative goal models. We describe a between-subjects controlled experiment that empirically validated the effectiveness of our approach and tool usability. We also report on the applicability and effectiveness, of our technique on a substantial case, where we use historical data and rational reconstruction to understand how a project evolved in the past, and explore alternative futures.Ph.D

Adding Temporal Intention Dynamics to Goal Modeling: A Position Paper

Goal models for early phase requirements enable modelers to elicit stakeholders\u27 intentions, analyze dependencies and select preferred alternatives. Standard analysis techniques provide options for analysis of static goal models but do not consider the dynamic environment that the model represents and do not evaluate the intentions over time. In this position paper, we illustrate that goal model analysis for early phase requirements can be improved by explicitly considering the intention dynamics of a potential system across multiple time scales