David Tuffley

The Gender Digital Divide in Developing Countries

Empirical studies clearly show that women in the developing world have significantly lower technology participation rates than men; a result of entrenched socio-cultural attitudes about the role of women in society. However, as studies are beginning to show, when those women are able to engage with Internet technology, a wide range of personal, family and community benefits become possible. The key to these benefits is on-line education, the access to which sets up a positive feedback loop. This review gives an overview of the digital divide, before focusing specifically on the challenges women in developing countries face in accessing the Internet. Current gender disparities in Internet use will be outlined and the barriers that potentially hinder womens access and participation in the online world will be considered. We will then look at the potential opportunities for womens participation in a global digital society along with a consideration of current initiatives that have been developed to mitigate gender inequity in developing countries. We will also consider a promising avenue for future research.

Using Composition Trees to Model and Compare Software Process

Software processes described by natural languages are frequently ambiguous and it is usually difficult to compare the similarity and difference between one process defined in one standard and its counterpart defined in another standard. This paper proposes Composition Tree (CT) as a graphic language to model software process based on its purpose and expected outcomes. CT is a formal graphic notation originally designed for modeling component based software system. This paper demonstrates that CT can be a powerful notation to give a clear and unambiguous description of a software process as well. This paper also investigates an algorithm which can compare two CT-modeled processes and provide an intuitive view called a Comparison Composition Tree (CCT) to highlight the differences and similarities between the two processes.

Optimising virtual team leadership in global software development

The globalisation of the software development industry has solved one set of problems and created a new set. Skills shortages in the host organisation can be solved by Global Software Development, yet the effective management of virtual teams is a new challenge. This study proposes a process reference model (PRM) and assessment model for the leadership of project teams, including complex virtual teams. Using modelling techniques from Software Engineering, the Leadership PRM describes the attributes that a project manager should possess, and the activities they should perform if they are to be perceived by those around them as leaders. The developed model contains the essential leadership characteristics. Leadership is difficult to define since it is situationally expressed. The context determines the outward form that leadership takes in a given situation. A manager who innately embodies these essential leadership qualities will be perceived as a leader by those around them. Leadership is a skill that can be learned and developed over time to a higher level of competence. Managers coordinate the activities of team members in the pursuit of goals, while leaders extend this management capability by knowing how to motivate team members to want to do what it is the leader wants them to do.

Creating Educational Networking Opportunities with Scoop.it

The adoption of social media technologies by higher education institutions reflects a significant change in learning paradigms. The traditional classroom model in which instructors were the sole source of information and knowledge is being replaced by a social constructivist model that allows learners to work together to share and create content. This study explores the potential of the digital curation platform Scoop.it as a networking tool among a group of first year Information Communication Technology (ICT) students. It will be shown that Scoop.it is a useful platform for the creation and sharing of information resources with other students and the wider community. Scoop.it facilitates the creation of networks for information sharing and knowledge building, which will be referred to as educational networking, but was less successful as a platform for forming social connections.

Bridging the Age-based Digital Divide

An increasing reliance on digital technology in ones everyday life necessitates the development of digital literacy skills to enable ones continued participation in the Internet information-age. As existing services, such as banking and shopping, move increasingly online, the likelihood of excluding certain demographic groups, such as the elderly and those living in rural areas, increases exponentially. The following article outlines the results of a pilot study that explored the perceived digital literacy skills of a group of adults in a rural community. It will be shown that despite relatively low confidence levels reported by the participants, they were nevertheless keen to learn how to use digital technologies. Based on participant feedback, the study concludes that there is a need to develop pedagogical strategies to teach digital literacy skills to older adults, particularly those living in rural and remote areas.

Formalizing Manufacturing Process Modeling Using Composition Trees

Optimizing manufacturing process modeling is critical to improving the efficiency and quality of manufacturing. However, manufacturing processes in general can be very complicated. A manufacturing process may involve (a) transforming a material into a new form, (b) combining different materials to form a new object, and (c) retrieving a certain part from a material as a new entity. All those activities could be confusing because many intermediate objects that exist only for a short period during the manufacturing process may have no formal names. To solve this problem, this paper proposes that composition trees (CT) can be successfully used to model manufacturing processes. Composition trees are parts of the formal notation in behavior engineering (BE), which is an innovative approach to the development of large software systems. For a composition tree, its characteristics of being intuitive, expressive and formal give it many advantages over other formal and informal modeling languages in software engineering. This paper uses a cooking case study to demonstrate how to use a composition tree model manufacturing processes. It is argued that the method could be applied to process engineering to good effect.

First Year Engagement & Retention: A Goal-Setting Approach

First year students face a daunting range of challenges as they make the transition to university life. Their experiences in the first months of university have a defining influence on their success or otherwise in their studies. The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of a case study that tests the efficacy of a student engagement and retention strategy aimed at first year students. The strategy encourages self-reflection and goal-setting by encouraging them to think constructively about their ideal future career. Once created, this idea is reinforced to become a firm goal. The student’s perception of university study is thus reframed from being an end in itself to being a means to an end. Instead of perceiving the future as endless assignments and exams, they see themselves moving purposefully towards their ideal career. This paper, therefore, describes a three-stage case study that explores the effectiveness of this engagement strategy with a cohort of 258 demographically-diverse first-year ICT students enrolled in a Bachelor of IT program. In the first stage of the strategy, the lecturer spends 20 minutes of the first four lectures presenting material across a range of cutting-edge technology topics. In addition to this, the characteristics of high-performing IT professionals are elucidated. The objective of this stage is to paint a picture of a creative, high-performing practitioner who is producing cutting-edge work. In the second stage, an assessment item is set in which the students explore their ideal career using a Web 2.0 digital curation tool; in the third stage, a series of three questionnaires are administered, the results of which are analysed to determine the students’ attitude towards the engagement strategy. In the final analysis, 63.4% of students surveyed indicated that the exercise had helped them to become more committed to finishing their degree program. It is suggested that this strategy could be generalised to work with other disciplines besides information technology. The results are sufficiently encouraging for a formal follow-up study to be performed in two and a half years, when this cohort are nearing the end of their degree program, to determine what longer term effect the engagement and retention strategy might have had on the students’ commitment to their study.

Cultural Issues and Impacts of Software Process in Very Small Entities (VSEs)

ISO/IEC29110 is an international standard of software lifecycle for small software companies also known as Very Small Entities (VSEs). While VSEs come from a diversity of cultural backgrounds, the current ISO/IEC29110 for VSEs does not address these cultural variations. VSEs from various cultural backgrounds might therefore find it difficult to adapt such a standard. This paper raises the issue that the current ISO/IEC29110 should recognize the impacts of cultural variation on software processes and cultural suggestions. It also point out one cultural dimension has a significant impact on software processes and their efficacy. Furthermore, the concepts of cultural consideration should not be limited to regions but, also cover the management perspective of individual VSE. In this paper, we identified two opposite cultural types which affect their software processes significantly. We propose that to make software process standards more practical for VSEs from different cultural backgrounds.

Formalizing the transition from requirements' change to design change using an evolutionary traceability model

The ideal outcome when responding to changes in the functional requirements of a system is that we can quickly determine (1) where to make the change, (2) how the change affects the architecture of the existing system, (3) which components of the system are affected by the change, and (4) what behavioral changes will need to be made to the components (and their interfaces) that are affected by the change of requirements. If these facts are known, the impact of the change is entirely understood and therefore manageable. Moreover, a system is likely to undergo multiple changes over the course of its service life, so there is also a need to make a comprehensive record of these changes thus preserving the integrity of the system and potentially extending its service life. To this worthy end, a traceability model using Behavior Trees as a formal notation to represent functional requirements is proposed. This will address the issues cited above, revealing change impacts on different types of design constructs (documents) caused by the changes to the requirements. The proposed model introduces the concept of evolutionary design documents that record the change history of the designs. From these documents, any version of a design document as well as the difference between any two versions can be reviewed, thus affording the desirable condition of full traceability. An important advantage of this model is that the major part of the procedure to generate these evolutionary design documents can be supported by automated tools making the method accessible for use in large-scale software and systems development projects.

Engineering Organisational Behaviour with Design Research

Can Design Research be used to develop process models of organisational behavior? The question is significant given the desirability of finding ways to optimise organisational performance. It is also significant because the precursor of such process models have been largely restricted to the software engineering domain. This paper examines (a) whether Design Research is an effective tool for developing such models, and (b) asks, can process models be more broadly defined to include organisational behavior generally? The study concludes that Design Research is an excellent tool for developers of process models in general, and that there appears to be no good reason why such models cannot be used to describe optimal organisational behavior in a broad range of domains.