Joseph T. Chao

Student Project Collaboration Using Wikis

A wiki is a web tool that allows users to easily create and edit web pages collaboratively. The ease-of-editing feature and accessibility from anywhere by anyone make wikis ideal for project collaboration. Although the wiki was introduced more than ten years ago, its use is relatively new in academia. This research explores the potential uses of wikis in Software Engineering, especially for software project team collaboration and communication. The author introduced wikis in a project-based software engineering course, and students soon discovered a number of innovative ways in which wikis can augment collaborative software development activities. A student survey indicates that vast majority of students found the wiki to be a good tool for project collaboration, and most of them plan to use wikis for future projects even if not required to do so.

Critical personality traits in successful pair programming

Pair programming (PP) is a common practice in Extreme programming, in which two programmers work together using a single computer. The close interaction required by PP makes it difficult to apply. The hypothesis is that certain personality traits are crucial for the success of PP, and PP partners should be chosen based on these personality traits. In this research, we first survey the programmers in industry to identify the perceived important personality traits for PP, and then conduct experiments to determine the significance of these personality traits in successful PP

Criteria for the selection of a programming language for introductory courses

Historically, the selection of a programming language for an introductory programming course has been a process consisting of faculty evaluation, discussion, and consensus. As the number of faculty, students, and language options grows, this process is likely to become increasingly unwieldy. In addition, the process lacks structure and cannot be easily replicated. The selection process will, in all likelihood, be repeated every two to three years. Providing a structured approach to the selection of a programming language would yield a more thorough evaluation of the options available and a more easily justified selection. Developing and documenting an exhaustive set of selection criteria, and an approach for the application of these criteria, will allow the process of language selection to be more easily repeated in the future. This paper presents a comprehensive set of criteria that should be considered when selecting a programming language for a teaching environment, and proposes several approaches for the application of these criteria.

Agile Software Factory for Student Service Learning

Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. By incorporating service-learning in Software Engineering classes, the student experience can be enhanced. Our approach was to create the Agile Software Factory within the department of Computer Science to handle the administrative tasks associated with a quality classroom service-learning experience. This paper describes the mission and the objectives of the Factory.

Navigating the framework jungle for teaching web application development

Studies indicate that information systems and computer science programs should place more emphasis on software design topics.Because little significant software in a commercial environment is developed using only programming skills,students without exposure to design patterns and frameworks will be ill-prepared for the workforce. This paper investigates whether PHP-based web development courses should use PHP frameworks to guide program development and how to select an appropriate framework. The paper begins with a literature review of the concept of design patterns, particularly the Model-View-Controller(MVC) pattern. We review studies that argue that design patterns and frameworks are essential pedagogical tools. Finally, we report on our work to select an appropriate framework for incorporation into web development courses as well as the process by which some of the major PHP MVC frameworks were assessed to determine which is best-suited for use in an academic environment.

Empowering Students and the Community through Agile Software Development Service-Learning

This paper describes an approach to service-learning in the software engineering classroom that involves a central clearinghouse and maintenance center for service-learning project requests, use of Agile methods, and collaboration with a technical communication course. The paper describes the benefits and drawbacks to service-learning in a software engineering course, rationale behind using Agile, the course layout, specifics of the collaboration, the final feedback of the community partners and students involved, and a discussion of lessons learned.

Balancing hands-on and research activities: a graduate level agile software development course

Agile software methodologies promote developing better software faster and have been gaining popularity in industry. However, agile methods are still unfamiliar in the academic world. While it is important to introduce agile methods to undergraduate students, we believe that having a graduate level course in agile development is as crucial. We offer a graduate level topic course that is dedicated to teaching agile software development while emphasizing both hands-on experience and research activities. In this course, students first work on a series of projects with real customers and then propose and conduct research on topics in agile development. The result of this approach has been well received by students and has stimulated student research interests in the area. This paper describes our experiences in offering the course.

Campus Event App - New Exploration for Mobile Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) enhances the real world environment with virtual information by embedding virtual objects in the real world to enhance the user’s life experience. Although AR technology has been around for fifty years, it has not been widely applied in practice until recent years when mobile phone technologies became more mature. Researchers have started to investigate the combination of AR and mobile phone technology ‒ mobile AR ‒ due the popularity of mobile devices. Mobile AR is a new and expanding area, and there are many research opportunities in the mobile AR field. The purpose of this project is to build a mobile AR application ‒ the Campus Event App ‒ as a means of demonstrating how mobile AR technologies can be used in combination with other applications to produce a useful and practical tool. The app brings new user experiences to event searching based on a combination of AR, mobile technology, and global positioning system (GPS) location-based techniques. The application is intended to help users to find daily campus events by visualizing events over the real world and showing the map and route to the event in real time.

Collaboration of Two Service-Learning Courses: Software Development and Technical Communication

We describe a service-learning collaboration between a software development course and a technical communication course. Good documentation is essential for easing users’ experience with a software system, as well as for introducing maintenance and support personnel to the system. Therefore, one of the main goals of this collaboration was to produce usable documentation to accompany the studentdeveloped software. Additionally, the goals were to provide students with a hands-on learning experience and to provide more time for software development. We discuss the courses involved, the goals/benefits of the collaboration, the collaboration process, the method of student communication, predicted challenges, assessment criteria, and results and future improvements. Despite the challenges with this first attempt at the collaboration, the results were encouraging and we have gained invaluable insight into how to improve for the future.

HUNT: Scavenger Hunt with Augmented Reality

This project shows a creative approach to the familiar scavenger hunt game. It involved the implementation of an iPhone application, HUNT, with Augmented Reality (AR) capability for the users to play the game as well as an administrative website that game organizers can use to create and make available games for users to play. Using the HUNT mobile app, users will first make a selection from a list of games, and they will then be shown a list of objects that they must seek. Once the user finds a correct object and scans it with the built-in camera on the smartphone, the application will attempt to verify if it is the correct object and then display associated multi-media AR content that may include images and videos overlaid on top of real world views. HUNT not only provides entertaining activities within an environment that players can explore, but the AR contents can serve as an educational tool. The project is designed to increase user involvement by using a familiar and enjoyable game as a basis and adding an educational dimension by incorporating AR technology and engaging and interactive multimedia to provide users with facts about the objects that they have located.