Web-Based Collaborative Learning in CS1: A Study on Outcomes of Peer Code Review

Based on a teacher-organized student-to-student code review session, we gathered both quantitative and qualitative data from 177 first-semester Information Technology undergraduate students to learn about their thoughts, experiences and outcomes from collaborative learning through an online tool in an introductory programming course. The students were given a programming exercise to solve using JavaScript in a Web-based IDE facilitating real time code sharing for peerevaluation of code based on five provided evaluation criteria: naming of artifacts in the code, formatting of code, use of data types, use of execution flow, and other comments. In the survey questionnaire, we employed a five-point Likert scale with an additional text field for qualitative feedback. For the qualitative free-text based answers, thematic coding was carried out to identify recurring themes and topics in the students’ answers. Based on the students’ feedback, our results indicate that the majority of the participants had positive experiences resulting in self-reported learning through collaborative work, peer-evaluation and problem solving

Web-based collaborative learning in CS1 a study on outcomes of peer code review

Based on a teacher-organized student-to-student code review session, we gathered both quantitative and qualitative data from 177 first-semester Information Technology undergraduate students to learn about their thoughts, experiences and outcomes from collaborative learning through an online tool in an introductory programming course. The students were given a programming exercise to solve using JavaScript in a Web-based IDE facilitating real time code-sharing for peer-evaluation of code based on five provided evaluation criteria: naming of artifacts in the code, formatting of code, use of data types, use of execution flow, and other comments. In the survey questionnaire, we employed a five-point Likert scale with an additional text field for qualitative feedback. For the qualitative free-text based answers, thematic coding was carried out to identify recurring themes and topics in the students' answers. Based on the students' feedback, our results indicate that the majority of the participants had positive experiences resulting in self-reported learning through collaborative work, peer-evaluation and problem solving.publishedVersio

Baseline Requirements for Comparative Research on Cross-Platform Mobile Development: A Literature Survey

Technical implementations are common in computing research to objectively assess hypotheses. In mobile computing, and more specifically within research on cross-platform mobile development, such implementations are usually in the form of mobile apps. Due to the lack of a common ground for research on app development, studies tend to lack depth and miss out on possible contributions. In an attempt to better the situation, we propose a technical baseline for future research on cross-platform app development to draw from based on previous studies’ technical implementations. We assess and scrutinize existing literature to find trends, and use the generated knowledge to lay out the baseline proposa

Software Development for Mobile Computing, the Internet of Things and Wearable Devices: Inspecting the Past to Understand the Future

Currently a convergence in software development for mobile computing (including mobile devices and special technology such as wearables) and the Internet of Things (IoT) can be observed. Devices from the fields are becoming part of a joint ecosystem and share the same infrastructure. Moreover, development processes have changed and user requirements have become very heterogeneous. We have been studying this development for a while, also by offering the fitting HICSS minitrack. In this article, we look into the past of software development for mobile devices, in the context of IoT, and for wearables. We analyse joint characteristics and show differences. Then we invite to a discussion that leads to a research outlook. While neither for industry nor for academia the journey is over, the convergence of fields should offer many new possibilities, prevent problems we faced in the past, but also introduce novel challenges

Analysis of Feature-Completeness in Android Cross-Platform Frameworks

In cross-platform mobile development research, we frequently encounter mentions of limitations and constraints potentially imposed by technical tools and development frameworks.This is especially prominent in the context of programmatic device- and platform feature access, including features such as GPS, Internet and device camera access.Although the majority of the literature does not empirically validate these claims, they have reached acceptance in both practitioners' communities and academic research.By downloading a sample of 300,000 Android applications available on the Google Play Store and analysing them, we set forth to find which platform- and device features are the most commonly included in deployed apps.Based on the results, we map the features to their availability in five major cross-platform development frameworks, thus provide an overview of feature completeness and potential shortcomings in these popular frameworks.Our findings indicate that the scrutinised frameworks range from 86.37% to 95.46% feature-completeness and can thus facilitate the development of mobile apps relying on features that are commonly found in our assessed sample of Android apps

Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and Performance

Along with the proliferation of high-end and performant mobile devices, we find that the inclusion of visually animated user interfaces are commonplace, but that research on their performance is scarce. Thus, for this study, eight mobile apps have been developed for scrutiny and assessment to report on the device hardware impact and penalties caused by transitions and animations, with an emphasis on apps generated using cross-platform development frameworks. The tasks we employ for animation performance measuring, are those of (i) a complex animation consisting of multiple elements, (ii) the opening sequence of a side menu navigation pattern, and (iii) a transition animation during in-app page navigation. We employ multiple performance profiling tools, and scrutinize metrics including frames per second (FPS), CPU usage, device memory usage and GPU memory usage, all to uncover the impact caused by executing transitions and animations. We uncover important differences in device hardware utilization during animations across the different cross-platform technologies employed. Additionally, Android and iOS are found to differ greatly in terms of memory consumption, CPU usage and rendered FPS, a discrepancy that is true for both the native and cross-platform apps. The findings we report are indeed factors contributing to the complexity of app development.Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and PerformanceacceptedVersio

Introduction to Mobile App Development Minitrack

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Progressive Web Apps: the Definite Approach to Cross-Platform Development?

Although development practices for apps have matured, cross-platform development remains a prominent topic. Typically, apps should always support both Android and iOS devices. They ought to run smoothly on various hardware, and be compatible with a host of platform versions. Additionally, device categories beyond smartphone and tablets have emerged, which makes multi-platform support even trickier. Truly developing an app once and serving the multitude of possible targets remains an issue despite having cross-platform frameworks that are acknowledged by practice and research. The technology unifier remains to be found, but Progressive Web Apps (PWA) might be a step towards it. In this paper, we analyse the foundations of PWAs in cross-platform development and scrutinize the status quo of current possibilities. Based on our observations, we investigate unified development, and discuss open questions. We seek to stimulate interest and narrow the immense gap that has arisen since industry started to embrace PWAs

Software Development for Mobile Computing, the Internet of Things and Wearable Devices: Inspecting the Past to Understand the Future

Currently a convergence in software development for mobile computing (including mobile devices and special technology such as wearables) and the Internet of Things (IoT) can be observed. Devices from the fields are becoming part of a joint ecosystem and share the same infrastructure. Moreover, development processes have changed and user requirements have become very heterogeneous. We have been studying this development for a while, also by offering the fitting HICSS minitrack. In this article, we look into the past of software development for mobile devices, in the context of IoT, and for wearables. We analyse joint characteristics and show differences. Then we invite to a discussion that leads to a research outlook. While neither for industry nor for academia the journey is over, the convergence of fields should offer many new possibilities, prevent problems we faced in the past, but also introduce novel challenges.publishedVersio

Unveiling the Data Shadow: A Scalable Software Architecture for Public Health and Electronically Assessed Data

In 2017, health expenditure in Norway amounted to 10,4 percent of GDP, and it increases by approx. 0,3 percent annually. Medical treatment and rehabilitation include treatment in hospitals, medical services, dental services, etc., and about half of Norway's health expenses are related to these services. In total, 97 percent of the budget is spent on treating disorders and support functions. Despite studies have shown that the greatest effect on health is within preventive health, only 3 percent of the Norwegian health expenses is used for that purpose. Computer-based technology is used to measure a large amount of health-related information as activity level, heartrate, sleep rhythms, eating habits, exercise habits and emotions. These large amounts of data collected by patients are available in electronic recording equipment and social media but are not shared with the physician or other healthcare professionals – in fact establishing a data shadow. The volume of data is massive, and health personnel do not know how to break the data down to sensible and usable information. This research project is founded in this perspective of preventive health and synthesizes available personal health information by utilizing commodity mobile and wearable hardware to gain a comprehensive insight into the health data shadow of an individual. This is further used to give individuals a fact-based awareness of own health and make informed choices, showcased through a persuasive technologies experiment, and secondly by a built prototype solution upon which health workers and medical doctors can be provided with a comprehensive, unfiltered data foundation to base diagnoses, treatment and council upon. Our major contribution is a proof of concept implementation and leveraging state of the art cloud based function as a service approach to build a scalable software architecture for a ubiquitous and heterogeneous environment harvesting the data shadow through activity tracking devices