CSEE&T 2009HYDERABAD,

INDIAConference Notes

INTRODUCTION The theme of the conference was

Scalability in Software Engineering Education and Training

Several topics related to the theme were discussed including new courses, redesign of courses, new skills, and industry/university partnerships

MAIN COMMENTS Main comments from discussions

CS students not equipped with problem solving skillsLack training in Requirements elicitationNo training in project estimationsGap between academia and industry required skillsLack of communication skills

NEW COURSE - EXAMPLE Suggestions to address these issues

New courses Example – Requirements Engineering &

Management training for SW development professionals , focusing onLearning writing skillsCommunication skills – soft skillsPrioritizationNegotiation skillsModeling and specifications Instructional model includes – first start with

small exercise, followed by instruction, repeat same exercise after instruction

CASE STUDY AUTHORING TOOL Using Rich Multimedia Case Studies

(CMU): Developing a Scalable Authoring PlatformCase studies are scarce, not available, time

consuming to record, requires talented people to compile cases

But they are very useful Case Based Teaching puts people/students in a

role playing scenario and forces communication Teachers and students learn from each other and

learn by doing.This tool will enable practitioners to capture

their observations and compile cases

PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING Scaling Performance Engineering

Training & Certification Across a Very Large EnterprisePerformance Engineering Expertise is

required to Analyze non functional requirements Capacity Planning Build a scalable architecture

Traditional approach of one group of PE catering to all projects is not enough due to the significant growth in IT projects

PERFORMANCE CONTD. Solution

Train at least 10% of engineers in this aspect at level 1 including testing and analysis of results, this analysis is most important

Study Used HP load runner 8.0

Results Self study did not work Video recordings silmiar to Elluminate worked well More number of years as developers – less % of

passes Book smart not equal to street smart!!

GLOBAL COMPETITION Global and Competition-based Model

for Fostering Technical and Soft Skills in Software Engineering Education

Presented a paper on their experiences dealing with different groups geographically located in different countries

Started with 2 countries, now work with 5 countries

GLOBAL CONTD. Main findings

Inexperienced students were stressed out at first signs of problems

Higher levels of communication within teams especially with coaches and auditors provided greater success

Socialization also helped in increasing productivity

XNA GAME DEVELOPMENT FOR SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE COURSE

XNA was used and evaluated to teach SA and SE course for Masters Students

Main Research Questions R1: To what degree does the COTS influence the

learning process? R2: How much time is spent on technical matters

and on architectural matters? R3: How difficult is it to integrate known

architectural and design patterns and learn the necessary prerequisite skills to be able to develop programs?

R4: How much do the students feel they have learned about SA through the game development project?

XNA CONTD. Analysis of Responses – Sample

R1: To what degree does the COTS influenced the learning process?The requirements gathering and specification:

Reflected in Q1 of Table 2, the result did not show that the COTS made a significant impact on requirements phase of the project.

The design of the architecture: From Q2, most of students agreed that the COTS did not hinder design of a good architecture. The major reason is that XNA supports different types of games development with flexible architecture.

XNA CONTD. How difficult was it to integrate known

architectural and design patterns and learn the necessary prerequisite skills to be able to develop programs?

results show that majority students disagree that they spent too much time learning the COTS.

Also, from our own experience, we received almost no help requests from students’ groups.

XNA CONTD. How much did the students feel they have

learned about SA through the project? From the results of Q9, most of the students feel

they have learned a lot about SA throughout the project.

For the negative attitude in result, probably due to the first time to use XNA in teaching and some of students might have become spellbound by the fun of creating a game, thus focusing more on game play than architecture.

XNA CONTD. R2: How much time is spent on

technical matters and on architectural matters?

From Q7, the choice of COTS influences the time the students have at their disposal to focus on architectural matters. From our own experience, the XNA environment is much more user-friendly with a high-level API, the probable reason was that many students were completely new to both C# and XNA