An evaluation of a teaching package constructed using a Web‐based lecture recorder

This paper describes an evaluation of a teaching package used to replace lectures in two closely related university courses on Discrete Mathematics. The package was developed using Audiograph, a Web‐based lecture recorder developed at the University of Surrey. Two groups of subjects were studied: a group of undergraduates, mostly fresh from schools, and a group of postgraduates, mostly with post‐university work experience. Although the postgraduates with their greater maturity and experience were significantly more positive in their appraisal than the undergraduates, both groups agreed on the beneficial aspects of being able to work at one's own time and pace, and being able to repeat material at will. It is clear, however, that, in the context investigated, where the lecturer was readily available, such a package can never supplant a human teacher, and that considerable effort needs to be expended in order to integrate the package into a rich learning environment

Scientists and software engineers: A tale of two cultures

The two cultures of the title are those observed in my field studies: the culture of scientists (financial mathematicians, earth and planetary scientists, and molecular biologists) developing their own software, and the culture of software engineers developing scientific software. In this paper, I shall describe some problems arising when scientists and software engineers come together to develop scientific software and discuss how these problems may be ascribed to their two different cultures

Some challenges facing scientific software developers: The case of molecular biology

It is apparent that the challenges facing scientific software developers are quite different from those facing their commercial counterparts. Among these differences are the challenges posed by the complex and uncertain nature of the science. There is also the fact that many scientists have experience of developing their own software, albeit in a very restricted setting, leading them to have unrealistic expectations about software development in a different setting. In this paper, we explore the challenges facing scientific software developers focusing especially on molecular biology. We claim that the nature and practice of molecular biology is quite different from that of the physical sciences and pose different problems to software developers. We do not claim that this paper is the last word on the topic but hope that it serves as the inspiration for further debate

The Nature of evidence in empirical software engineering

In this paper, we argue that the gap between empirical software engineering and software engineering practice might be lessened if more attention were paid to two important aspects of evidence. The first is that evidence from case or field studies of actual software engineering practice is essential in order to understand and inform that practice. The second is that the nature of evidence should fit the purpose to which the evidence is going to be put. One type of evidence is not per se better than another. For example, the evidence required to persuade a manager to change an aspect of practice might be totally different in nature from that required to deepen the academic community's understanding of such practice

Some challenges facing software engineers developing software for scientists

In this paper, the author discusses two types of challenges facing software engineers as they develop software for scientists. The first type is those challenges that arise from the experience that scientists might have of developing their own software. From this experience, they internalise a model of software development but may not realise the contextual factors which make such a model successful. They thus have expectations and assumptions which prove challenging to software engineers. The second type is those challenges which, while not unique to the development of software for scientists, have especial significance in the context of such development. These include the challenges of ensuring effective user engagement and of developing software for a community

Models of scientific software development

Over the past decade, I have performed several field studies with scientists developing software either on their own or together with software engineers. Based on these field study data, I identify a model of scientific software development as practiced in many scientific laboratories and communities. This model does not fit the standard software engineering models. For example, the tasks of requirement elicitation and software evaluation are not clearly delineated. Nevertheless, it appears to be successful within the context in which it is used. In the context in which scientists collaborate with software engineers, however, I describe problems which arose from the clash of this model with a traditional,phased software engineering model. Given these models, I discuss the issues which have to be addressed in order to determine the software techniques and tools which might best support scientific software development in different contexts

Some problems of professional end user developers

By the term 'professional end user developers' we mean people such as research scientists who work in highly technical, knowledge-rich domains and who develop software in order to further their professional goals. In common with other end user developers, professional end user developers do not describe themselves as software engineers and have no formal training in software engineering. They differ from most other end user developers, however, in that learning programming languages rarely presents them with any problem. In this paper, drawing on data from field studies of different groups of professional end users, we examine the problems that such people face in meeting the demands of software development given the culture in which they work and their normal development practice. Understanding these problems is an essential prerequisite to developing tools, techniques etcetera to support professional end user development

Infant Preferences for Two Properties of Infant-Directed Speech

This study examined preferences for prosodic and structural properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) in 20 infants, 11 girls and 9 boys, ages 0;11;3 to 0;13;0 (mean age 0;11;28). It was hypothesized that year-old infants would demonstrate a preference for infant-directed structure (IS) over adult-directed structure (AS) regardless of prosody, and that infants would demonstrate no preference for either infant-directed prosody (IP) or adult-directed prosody (AP) regardless of structure. Listening times to passages were compared across infants for four conditions: IS/IP; IS/AP; AS/IP; AS/AP. Results indicate a non-significant but noticeable trend toward a preference for infant-directed structure. In addition, weak correlations were found between vocabulary size and strength of preference for adult-directed prosody, and between age and strength of preference for adult-directed prosody. A non-significant but noticeable interaction was found between prosody and structure and vocabulary. Overall, infants appear to prefer listening to infant-directed structure to adult-directed structure; more advanced language learners show a stronger preference for adult-directed prosody than do their less advanced age-mates; older infants show a stronger preference for adult-directed prosody than do younger infants; and preference for infant-directed structure (but not infant-directed prosody) depends on vocabulary level

Collaboration in Pair Programming: driving and switching

This paper reports on an empirical study about the mechanisms of the collaboration of drivers and navigators in Pair Programming (PP) sessions. Based on video recordings of professional software developers, we analysed the mechanisms of role switches and how developers split the task of driving. We found that developers do not evenly contribute to the task of driving and that they spend on average a third of the session without any computer interaction focusing mainly on communication. In addition, our results show that most pairs switch roles frequently and that the frequency and fuidity of switches indicate a high level of engagement on the part of both developers

Modular and dual-Dedekind subgroups in certain classes of infinite groups

The main inspiration of this thesis were the two papers of Schmidt ([I] & [II]) and the paper of Menegazzo ([III]). Chapter One is concerned with establishing some basic results concerning modular subgroups, and Chapter Two with defining a class of groups * ( which includes the class of locally finite groups) and extending the theorems in Schmidt ([I]) to groups in this class. Chapter Three, which was the first chapter of the thesis to be written, examines the structure of modular subgroups in locally finite groups with the minimum condition on subgroups (where there is a definitive structure theorem to help us). Chapter Four extends the results of Schmidt ([II]) to locally finite groups. Finally, Chapter Five takes a (by no means exhaustive) look at dual-dedekind subgroups (i.e. subgroups which are dual to modular subgroups). A few theorems in the first section of Chapter Five are simply the dual of theorems in Chapter One; for the sake of clarity, however, their proofs are included. After the main body of this thesis had been completed, my supervisor, Dr. S.E.Stonehewer, produced a definitive theorem concerning the structure of corefree modular subgroups in locally finite groups analogous to the main theorem of Schmidt ([II]). For the sake of completeness, this theorem is included in an appendix