Ken Abernethy

Technology transfer issues for formal methods of software specification

Accurate and complete requirements specifications are crucial for the design and implementation of high-quality software. Unfortunately, the articulation and verification of software system requirements remains one of the most difficult and error-prone tasks in the software development lifecycle. The use of formal methods, based on mathematical logic and discrete mathematics, holds promise for improving the reliability of requirements articulation and modeling. However, formal modeling and reasoning about requirements has not typically been a part of the software analysts education and training, and because the learning curve for the use of these methods is nontrivial, adoption of formal methods has proceeded slowly. As a consequence, technology transfer is a significant issue in the use of formal methods. In this paper, several efforts undertaken at NASA aimed at increasing the accessibility of formal methods are described. These include the production of the following: two NASA guidebooks on the concepts and applications of formal methods, a body of case studies in the application of formal methods to the specification of requirements for actual NASA projects, and course materials for a professional development course introducing formal methods and their application to the analysis and design of software-intensive systems. In addition, efforts undertaken at two universities to integrate instruction on formal methods based on these NASA materials into the computer science and software engineering curricula are described.

A learning object repository in support of introductory IT courses

The recently proposed IT model curriculum identifies a set of knowledge areas appropriate for undergraduate IT programs, each consisting of of knowledge units, which in turn consist of topics and learning outcomes indicating the depth to which the topics are to be covered. Because the discipline is so new, and also because of the flexibility in particular curricular design that is allowed by the learning outcomes approach adopted in the curriculum standards, textbooks supporting some of the knowledge areas in the body of knowledge may be slow to appear. Further, as textbooks often codify a particular way to teach a particular course, the absence of textbooks may actually complicate the design of IT programs. One way to alleviate these potential problems may be through the provision of online learning objects. The focus of this paper is the creation of one set of such materials, particularly a learning object repository to support components of the first year of an IT program.

Reexamining the introductory computer science course in liberal arts institutions

We describe our rationale for developing a new introductory computer science course at Furman University and summarize our experience with it. The pilot offerings were made possible in part by an grant from the National Science Foundation that provided important facilities for the laboratory components of the course. While the course does not abandon the traditional programming content found in CS 1, the course does attempt to place programming in the context of a larger framework of computer science stressing virtual machine and object oriented paradigms. It introduces problem solving at several levels of abstraction-including fourth generation, third-generation, and real-time operating system virtual machine language levels. It serves both as an entry level course to the computer science major and a rigorous service course for students in other (primarily scientific) disciplines. Introduction The evolution of computer science as a discipline has been nearly as rapid as that of the technology in the computer industry itself. The debate over the nature of the discipline and its model curriculum has been lively and continuous [l-9]. The recent report by the ACM Task Force on the Core of Computing [8] represents still another step in this evolution--an attempt to separate the discipline from the image of the “inventor and purveyor of computing technology” [S]. In the view of the Task Force, technology dominates current core courses while the science is relegated to electives. This is viewed as especially true for introductory courses where the assumption that “computer science equals programming” dominates. While we concur with the general aim of the Task Force report--that is, to establish the experimental and theoretical areas of the discipline as more integral to the core curriculum--we are not yet convinced that its proposed introductory course sequence is practical or desirable at liberal arts institutions like ours. It is nonetheless in consideration of many of the issues put forth in the Task Force as well as our view of the paradigm that a computer scientist must adopt that has led us to develop our new introductory major course. We hope that some of the issues we express here and our experiences learned from preliminary offerings of our course can contribute to this important and ongoing debate. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercia1 advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission.

GLOBAL DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET II: NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN WEB SITE CONNECTIVITY

Conventional wisdom argues that low- and middle-income countries can use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in general, and the Internet and the World-Wide Web in particular, to bridge the income gap with high-income countries. The so-called “digital divide” between the rich and the poor is well documented: inhabitants of rich countries have far greater access to the Internet and other forms of ICT than inhabitants of low-income countries. However, access to technology is only one factor affecting the ability to increase income by using the Web. An equally important factor is the ability to attract traffic to a web site. If the Web is to help economic development, then it is crucial that web sites publicizing investment opportunities, goods, or services attract investors and customers. This paper sets out to determine whether there is a digital divide in web site traffic as well as in access to ICT. The answer, it turns out, is unequivocally “yes”, suggesting that the argument that the Web can be used to bridge the income gap between rich and poor countries needs considerable refinement.

Inquiry-based computer science instruction: some initial experiences

In computer science, as well as in other disciplines, it is critical to the success of the educational process that students become actively engaged with the material, rather than passive recipients of it. Ideally, this interaction will begin before the class meets on a particular topic, in a process known as inquiry-based learning. This paper describes some initial experiments with using technology to implement an inquiry-based learning paradigm.

Language Choice for CS1 and CS2: Experiences from Two Universities

Computer Science departments are forced to address the choice of programming language in beginning computer science courses repeatedly as programming languages continue to be developed and improved. (Note the recent advent of Java.) This choice will be revisited in a cyclical fashion on an ongoing basis. In this article, we present a set of criterion that can be used to address this issue. We do not support or defend any particular programming language, but present a method that can be used to make this decision. This method in the form of a set of criterion is applied to two universities which have made different choices each of which is valid for its context.

Some Applications from Software Testing for a Discrete Structures Course

The software development community is becoming increasingly aware of the importance of improved software testing, and interest is growing rapidly in new methods that promise to make testing more effective. However, software testing is a topic that is often ignored or relegated to brief components of specific upper‐level courses in the computer science curriculum. On the other hand, instructors of discrete structures courses recognize a need for practical and accessible applications of many of the topics that are discussed in their courses. In this article a number of such applications are given through a discussion of the use of complexity and coverage metrics in software testing. While no attempt is made to give a complete discussion of all the issues related to the use of such metrics, the presentation is organized in a way that provides a coherent introductory tutorial on this subject‐‐as opposed to simply cataloging certain applications. It is hoped that this approach will enable students in a discret...

Information Technology Training in Developing Countries

It is well known and well documented that there is a severe shortage of information technology professionals around the world. In an approach to address this shortage, Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica haw developed a training program to help produce and sustain an information technology workforce in Jamaica. This paper describes the Caribbean Institute of Technology (CIT), a software training institute that was started in Jamaica in 1999. The institute consists of a main centre in Montego Bay and several satellite centres distributed across the island of Jamaica. These centres provide an intense ten-month training program for up to 100 Jamaicans at each site every year. The paper describes the organisation of the centres, the curriculum of the program, the co-operative efforts between Furman University and the University of the West Indies, and the future direction of CIT. Although this paper describes a case study within Jamaica, such an institute night well be duplicated in other developing countries.

Comparing object-oriented and data flow models—a case study

Object-oriented analysis is the newest component of a proposed object-oriented software life cycle methodology. In this paper, we make comparisons between the standard data flow diagram (DFD) models and the newly introduced object models within the context of an existing moderately complex (approx. 65,000 lines) software project. In particular, we compare the complexities of competing models for the project domain using some simple metrics.