Juan Manuel Carrillo de Gea

Effects of competitive computer-assisted learning versus conventional teaching methods on the acquisition and retention of knowledge in medical surgical nursing students

PURPOSE This paper presents a novel approach of computer-assisted learning for nursing education in university undergraduate courses. BACKGROUND The most innovative aspect of the proposal is the design of nursing assignments as on-line competitions. The effects of competitive e-learning versus conventional teaching methods on the acquisition and retention of knowledge were compared in a course on medical-surgical nursing. METHOD A total of 116 students of mixed gender, age, computer experience and educational background in a second-year course on medical-surgical nursing participated in the study. Data were collected from nursing students at four time points. The on-line activities were carried out using a web-based automatic evaluation system. RESULTS The study revealed that the competitive e-learning method produced significant cognitive gains for the experimental group students in the immediate follow-up test. Nevertheless, both teaching methods resulted in similar knowledge retention in the 10-week follow-up test. CONCLUSION Significant benefits were found following our approach. The work of the students could be evaluated along the course, the workload of instructors was reduced and students received immediate feedback by the on-line judge, which promoted both independent learning and reflective thinking. The approach is applicable to any other nursing educational institution.

Reusing Requirements in Global Software Engineering

Knowledge sharing and reuse in global software engineering (GSE) are challenging issues. Knowledge management (KM) is specifically impacted because on top of distance, culture and language mismatches, there is also the perceived risk of sharing something which could mean that others could take over some work. Mistrust and protectionism are often the consequence, leading to insufficient reuse. This is visible specifically in requirements engineering (RE), where all reuse should start. In this chapter, we will look to reuse in RE with a detailed look on how to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration in distributed environments. We first look into the state of the practice. Then we present a lightweight, reuse-based, global RE method called PANGEA (Process for globAl requiremeNts enGinEering and quAlity), based on natural language requirements and software engineering standards. Based on this method, we also build a prototypical tool, called PANTALASA (PANgea Tool And Lightweight Automated Support Architecture) which provides automated support for PANGEA. Its features are drawn from PANGEA and the state of the practice commercially available RE tools. A prototype of PANTALASA was developed by using Semantic MediaWiki and Facebook and applied to a case study in the domain of hotel management. We could show with this method and prototype that collaboration and thus KM and reuse in RE are improved.

Guía de buenas prácticas de seguridad informática en el tratamiento de datos de salud para el personal sanitario en atención primaria

Resumen Con la introducción de la historia clínica digital surge la necesidad de reforzar la seguridad de los datos personales de salud para garantizar su privacidad. A pesar de la gran cantidad de medidas de seguridad técnicas y de recomendaciones existentes para el ámbito sanitario, hay un aumento en las violaciones de la privacidad de los datos personales de los pacientes en centros sanitarios, en muchos casos como consecuencia de errores o descuidos de los profesionales sanitarios. En este trabajo se presenta una guía de buenas prácticas de seguridad informática en la manipulación de los datos personales de salud por parte del personal sanitario, elaborada a partir de recomendaciones, normativa y estándares nacionales e internacionales. El material presentado en este trabajo puede emplearse tanto en la formación como en auditorías de seguridad informática a trabajadores de los centros de atención primaria.

Software project management tools in global software development: a systematic mapping study

Global software development (GSD) which is a growing trend in the software industry is characterized by a highly distributed environment. Performing software project management (SPM) in such conditions implies the need to overcome new limitations resulting from cultural, temporal and geographic separation. The aim of this research is to discover and classify the various tools mentioned in literature that provide GSD project managers with support and to identify in what way they support group interaction. A systematic mapping study has been performed by means of automatic searches in five sources. We have then synthesized the data extracted and presented the results of this study. A total of 102 tools were identified as being used in SPM activities in GSD. We have classified these tools, according to the software life cycle process on which they focus and how they support the 3C collaboration model (communication, coordination and cooperation). The majority of the tools found are standalone tools (77%). A small number of platforms (8%) also offer a set of interacting tools that cover the software development lifecycle. Results also indicate that SPM areas in GSD are not adequately supported by corresponding tools and deserve more attention from tool builders.

Co-located and distributed natural-language requirements specification: traditional versus reuse-based techniques

Requirements Engineering (RE) includes processes intended to elicit, analyse, specify and validate systems and software requirements throughout the software life cycle. Mastering the principles of RE is key to achieving the goals of better, cheaper and quicker systems and software development projects. It is also important to be prepared to work with remote teammates, as distributed and global projects are becoming more common. This paper presents an experiment with a total of 31 students from two universities in Spain and Morocco who were assigned to either a co‐located or a distributed team. Both traditional and reuse‐based requirements specification techniques were applied by the participants to produce requirements documents. Their outcomes were then analysed, and the approaches were compared from the point of view of their effect on a set of performance‐based and perception‐based variables in co‐located and distributed settings. We found significant differences in only productivity (Z = −2.320, p = 0.020) and difficulty (Z = −2.124, p = 0.034) as regards the scores attained for non‐reuse and reuse conditions, both in the co‐located modality. Our findings show that, in general, the participants attained similar results for requirements specification when using the two strategies in both distributed and non‐distributed environments. Copyright

Are the expected benefits of requirements reuse hampered by distance? An experiment

BackgroundSoftware development processes are often performed by distributed teams which may be separated by great distances. Global software development (GSD) has undergone a significant growth in recent years. The challenges concerning GSD are especially relevant to requirements engineering (RE). Stakeholders need to share a common ground, but there are many difficulties as regards the potentially variable interpretation of the requirements in different contexts. We posit that the application of requirements reuse techniques could alleviate this problem through the diminution of the number of requirements open to misinterpretation.ResultsThis paper presents a reuse-based approach with which to address RE in GSD, with special emphasis on specification techniques, namely parameterised requirements and traceability relationships. An experiment was carried out with the participation of 29 university students enrolled on a Computer Science and Engineering course. Two main scenarios that represented co-localisation and distribution in software development were portrayed by participants from Spain and Morocco. The global teams achieved a slightly better performance than the co-located teams as regards effectiveness, which could be a result of the worse productivity of the global teams in comparison to the co-located teams. Subjective perceptions were generally more positive in the case of the distributed teams (difficulty, speed and understanding), with the exception of quality.ConclusionsA theoretical model has been proposed as an evaluation framework with which to analyse, from the point of view of the factor of distance, the effect of requirements specification techniques on a set of performance and perception-based variables. The experiment utilised a new internationalisation requirements catalogue. None of the differences found between co-located and distributed teams were significant according to the outcome of our statistical tests. The well-known benefits of requirements reuse in traditional co-located projects could, therefore, also be expected in GSD projects.

Automated support for reuse‐based requirements engineering in global software engineering

GlobalSoftware Engineering implies a paradigm shift towards globally‐distributed development that can be advantageous, but at the cost of having to address the specific challenges that arise when the stakeholders are not colocated. Reusing assets during the initial processes of the software development life cycle could be beneficial, but automated support is essential if the expected benefits of requirements reuse are to be actually obtained. The main contribution of this paper is the specification of a collection of software features for a tool support for distributed, catalogue‐based natural‐language requirements reuse. Two additional contributions are also made: (1) an implementation of the requirements specifications previously mentioned using Drupal, a Content Management System; and (2) an empirical assessment of this tool support using distributed university students as subjects (n=57). According to our findings, the tool helps in making requirements reuse better than requirements specification from scratch and in managing traceability, is easy to use, useful, and easy to learn. In contrast, the tool is not particularly suitable for managing users and user roles.