Kesav V. Nori

A framework for software product engineering

Software engineering today is heavily focused on the ideas of process maturity and continuous improvement. Processes are designed to deliver products. Process engineering should ideally rest on theoretical foundations of sound product engineering; however the field is currently lacking such foundations. Drawing inspiration from compiler design, we present a systematic framework for software product engineering that develops the product through successive levels of realization. The framework separates the concerns in software development by relating each level to a knowledge domain and localizing exactly on those qualities that become manifest in that knowledge domain. The basis of the framework is a mathematical model for reasoning about the correctness of realization schemes as well as the transformations between levels, so that each level preserves previously created qualities while adding new desired qualities. We also discuss some of the practical aspects of implementing this approach.

What makes it hard to apply software product lines to educational technologies

In this paper, we present our experience of mining a software product line (SPL) from 9 existing eLearning systems developed at 9 different locations by 9 different teams following 9 varied development processes over a decade. The goal of this family of eLearning systems is to address 287 million adult illiterates in India spread across 22 Indian languages. This presents a unique and challenging situation as the SPL arises from a societal context rather than a business context as in traditional SPL. We explain the context of this domain and present the key challenges of mining an SPL from these eLearning systems. The main intent of this paper is to present our journey of applying SPL to these legacy eLearning systems in the last six years. Finally, we briefly discuss the ideas of Lean Software Product Lines and Global Software Product Lines as two potential future research directions for the SPL community.

Requirements, Plato's Cave, and Perceptions of Reality

Software developers build systems in response to agreed-upon requirements as if those requirements were absolutely perfect. Those of us in the requirements field know that the process of creating and documenting requirements is extremely error- prone. In fact, so error prone that we wonder why developers (a) accept them as truth, and then to make matters worse, (b) make it so difficult to change them when problems are eventually discovered. This paper draws an analogy between the process of requirements determination and Platos allegory of the cave. Specifically, it describes requirements problems that arise when our perceptions of reality differ from actual reality.

Towards a Model Driven eLearning Framework to Improve Quality of Teaching

There is a significant dearth of time and qualified teachers to make 200 million adult illiterates of India spread across 22 Indian Languages literate and it would take massive effort to address the scale and variety challenges. In this paper, we summarize four and half years of our experience of analyzing and improving a decade-long technology to adult literacy problem. Based on this experience and extensive interviews with teachers/learners and with the goal of devising quality instruction at attractive productivity rates through technology, we propose GAMBLE as a unified modelling framework and technical platform to organize instructional material in the form of data (facts, cases, rules and models). Essentially GAMBLE allows learners to perform well at all levels (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create) of BloomsTaxonomy. We briefly present the case of applying GAMBLE framework to adult literacy and discuss its broad applications for school education as well.

Designing Technology for 287 Million Learners

How can we design technology for 287 million adult illiterates in India spread across 22 Indian Languages? In this paper, we summarize our experience towards addressing this challenge over the last 6 years. We briefly present our journey of technology for adult literacy in India emphasizing the key shift in focus between different generations. We then present the design of technology for adult literacy from multiple perspectives of learning methodologies, learning technologies, software engineering and HCI. The main thrust of this paper is to present a holistic perspective of designing technology for supporting education in the context of mass scale and variety.

Towards a Synthesis of Learning Methodologies, Learning Technologies and Software Product Lines

The tremendous potential of technology to support teaching/learning is being critically questioned today because of the significant decrease in quality of instruction and the massive effort of developing and maintaining educational technologies. In four and half years of our experience of analyzing and improving a decade long technology for adult literacy, we observed a strong need for (i) a unified modeling framework to organize instructional material in the form of data (ii) a technology platform to support the framework in (i) and an interactive environment based on the framework for both teachers and learners (iii) a methodology that accelerates the development and maintenance of educational technologies. In this paper, we briefly present our work that addresses some of the above needs through (i) GAMBLE, a unified modeling framework to improve quality of instruction by organizing instructional material in the form of data (facts, cases, rules, models-fcrm). Essentially, GAMBLE is a goal-driven model-based approach to teaching/learning based on fundamental learning methodologies (ii) We briefly discuss about our technology platform for modeling instructional material in the form of fcrm and present GURU, an integrated and interactive authoring and learning environment for both teachers and learners based on GAMBLE (iii) We expose the challenges of applying software product lines to accelerate educational technologies and suggest Lean Software Product Lines (SPLEAN) as a light-weight, integrated approach to address the scale and variety inherent in technology for education (T4E) domain. While (i) and (ii) are proposed specifically for adult literacy, we believe that they are also widely applicable to other areas like school and engineering education.

Automating an eLearning System - A Case Study

Developing and maintaining eLearning Systems for multilingual requirements manually is difficult in terms of cost, quality and productivity because of the enormous number and huge variety of products. We propose an approach that emphasizes on standardization, tools and processes to enable automation in these kinds of systems. This differs from traditional approaches as it focuses on building systems that involve little or no computer programming. The approach and concepts are illustrated using a large scale industrial project. The lessons learned from this exercise are used to solve “a class of problems” in eLearning Systems.

A Patterns-Based Approach for Modeling Instructional Design and TEL Systems

The core idea of patterns and pattern languages is the encapsulation, modeling and delivery of experts knowledge and best practices to novices in a discipline. The use of such an approach is critical for modeling Instructional Design (ID) as it forms the basis for design of TEL systems (for e.g., eLearning Systems). While there is extensive work on patterns for ID from Pedagogy Patterns Project, E-LEN and so on, the focus has been on patterns at lower level of granularity rather than an approach that integrates patterns from ID and TEL perspectives. In addition, most of the researchers have focused either on domain patterns (ID) or TEL patterns, and not both. In this context, this paper presents a patterns-based approach to design of TEL systems based on ID. The crux of this approach is to model a solution in ID using patterns and integrate it with a solution in TEL. To this end, we present an approach that integrates Pattern-Oriented Instructional Design (POID) and Software Architecture for TEL Systems based on fundamental principles in software engineering (SE). We then illustrate our approach and ID patterns through adult literacy case study.

What makes it hard to teach software engineering to end users? some directions from adaptive and personalized learning

Today, software is being co-designed, co-developed, co-maintained and customized by professionals from a wide range of other disciplines and end users from varied and different backgrounds in addition to software engineers. While there is extensive research on facilitating and supporting end users to write better software, there is sparse research on better ways of educating them with software engineering (SE) knowledge. On the other hand, learning domain has recognized the need for adaptive and personalized learning (APL) and developed numerous approaches, methods and tools to address that need. The main purpose of this paper is firstly to expose some challenges of teaching SE to end users with an aim of understanding learning needs of end users. We then present a brief overview of APL domain and an ontology based framework for integrating APL with software engineering education (SEE). We then discuss a brief example of end users from adult literacy followed by some future directions towards delivering personalized SEE.

A Software Engineering Perspective for Accelerating Educational Technologies

How can Software Engineering support Technology for Education (T4E) community to enable even non- technical users to rapidly develop quality instructional software (Technology for X) with minimal effort? The main thrust of this tutorial is to unveil and uncover the potential of Software Engineering to address the above concerns from multiple dimensions. We briefly discuss the state-of-art in educational technologies (ET) from a software engineering (SE) perspective and formulate significant research challenges for both the communities. We emphasize that developing and maintaining educational technologies is not just content and infrastructure management but has tremendous scope to apply the ideas of software engineering. SE is further required to address the scale and variety challenges that are inherent in T4E domain. We discuss the applicability of SE life cycles (iterative, agile) in the context of T4E domain. We then present a case study of applying software engineering ideas to accelerate the development and maintenance of a family of eLearning Systems. Finally, we briefly outline an integrated approach of Lean, Agile and Software Product Lines (SPL) with potential research agenda for next 5-10 years and uncover this approach as a significant value add for the T4E community.