Paolo Maresca

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning in software engineering

Collaboration is one of the keywords in education as well as in computer-assisted instruction. In this respect, e-learning platforms provide users with specific tools, enabling them to collaborate and/or to cooperate so to reach common objectives. Collaboration is considered as a teaching strategy but, in many cases such as in the software engineering classes, collaboration has to be a learning outcome itself, since students must acquire a specific ability in team working. Thus a suited working environment is needed, that has to be much more than just a flexible Learning Management System. Consequently, a specific project has been launched within the Italian Eclipse Community in the framework of the Enforcing Team Cooperation (ETC) activity. The aim of the project is that of enforcing and enlarging cooperation activities among a large number of students, all attending software engineering courses at different Universities in Italy. The main idea behind the project is the implementation of a really effective Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) paradigm, to be used for higher education on team cooperation, in software engineering classes for the analysis, design, and development of software programs along their lifecycle.

Reuse reengineering and validation via concept assignment

The first step in a software reuse reengineering process is to analyze the structural characteristics of the existing software so as to produce software component sets, each of which is a candidate for clustering and reengineering into a reusable module. This step is founded on one or more candidature criteria and the cost of the following steps depends on their quality. The notions of completeness and adequacy as applied to candidature criteria are introduced, the need for an adequacy validation process before they are applied on a software system is outlined. An adequate validation process founded on the assignment of a concept to the candidate modules is proposed, and the results of an application of this process are described and discussed.<<ETX>>

An XML-based approach to multimedia software engineering for distance learning

Multimedia Software Engineering (MSE) is a new frontier for both Software Engineering (SE) and Visual Languages (VL). In fact multimedia software engineering can be considered as the discipline for systematic specification, design, substitution and verification of visual patterns. Visual Languages contribute to MSE such concepts as: Visual notation for software specification, design and verification flow charts, ER diagrams, Petri Nets, UML visualization, visual programming languages etc. Multimedia Software Engineering and Software Engineering are like two sides of the same coin. On the one hand we can apply software engineering principles to the design of multimedia systems. On the other hand we can apply multimedia technologies to the software engineering practice. In this paper we concentrate on the first of these possibilities. One of the promising application areas for Multimedia Software Engineering is Distance Learning. One aim of this paper is to demonstrate how it is possible to design and to implement complex multimedia software systems for Distance Learning using a Teleaction Object transformer based on XML technology applying a Component-Based Multimedia Software Engineering approach. The paper shows a complete process of dataflow transformation that represents TAO in different ways (text, TAOML, etc.) and at different levels of abstraction. A component-based tool architecture is also discussed.The use of an XML-based approach in the Distance Learning field has other advantages as well. It facilitates reuse of the teaching resources by using metadata. Standards for representing multimedia distance learning materials are currently evolving. Such standards are necessary in order to allow a representation which is independent of hardware and software platforms so that this material can be examined, for example, in a web browser or so that it may be reused.

The ECDL programme in Italian Universities

The European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) programme aims at testing practical skills and competences in using ICT tools. This paper presents the results of a monitoring exercise aimed at analyzing the impact of the ECDL programme in the Italian Universities. The ECDL programme, adopted in most Italian Universities since the year 2000, has involved several tens of thousands of students. Our investigation focused on the experiences of the Universities in the year 2003 and, in particular, on the organizational and teaching issues addressed for the implementation of the programme. The analysis has shown that the implementation relied on a large variety of choices about what concerns the teaching organization, the credits awarded to the students and the type of ECDL certification required. These choices varied as a function of the size of the Universities, whereas their geographical location did not seem to have any influence.

Maintenance and intermodular dependencies in Pascal environment

The authors outline the important role that actual and (mainly) potential intermodular dependencies play in the maintenance phase of a software product. They discuss the problem with reference to Pascal systems and they show how reverse engineering and static code analysis enable the identification of the actual and potential intermodular data flow and relationships. Some constraints are proposed to prevent an uncontrollable proliferation of data binding among modules and their reciprocal calls. To achieve the consistency of the programs with respect to the adopted constraints, the intermodular dependency knowledge, as produced by reverse engineering, is used to restructure both data and module declarations.<<ETX>>

Modeling Social Influences in a Knowledge Management Network

The issue of knowledge management in a distributed network is receiving increasing attention from both scientific and industrial organizations. Research efforts in this field are motivated by the awareness that knowledge is more and more perceived as a primary economic resource and that, in the context of organization of organizations, the augmented management complexity of its whole life cycle requires new reference models. In this paper, we build on recent research work to propose a distributed knowledge management framework that can be used in several application domains. We characterize the dimension of social influences in terms of identity, negotiation and trust modeling them within a framework that can augment learning and cooperation capabilities through knowledge sharing and effective communication. A particular instance of the presented framework, to handle the problem of risk management in enterprise alliance partnership, is discussed as a case study that shows the practical applicability of our approach.

The role of big data and cognitive computing in the learning process

In this paper, we investigate how the raise of big data and cognitive computing systems is going to redesign the labor market, also impacting on the learning processes. In this respect, we make reference to higher education and we depict a model of a smart university, which relies on the concepts that are at the basis of the novel smart-cities development trends. Thus, we regard education as a process so that we can find specific issues to solve to overcome existing criticisms, and provide some suggestions on how to enhance universities performances. We highlight inputs, outputs, and dependencies in a block diagram, and we propose a solution built on a new paradigm called smarter-university, in which knowledge grows rapidly, is easy to share, and is regarded as a common heritage of both teachers and students. Among the others, a paramount consequence is that there is a growing demand for competences and skills that recall the so called T-shape model and we observe that this is pushing the education system to include a blend of disciplines in the curriculums of their courses. In this overview, among the wide variety of recent innovations, we focus our attention on cognitive computing systems and on the exploitation of big data, that we expect to further accelerate the refurbishment process of the key components of the knowledge society and universities as well.

Transformation Dataflow in Multimedia Software Engineering Using TAO_XML: A Component-Based Approach

Multimedia Software Engineering (MSE) is a new frontier for both Software Engineering (SE) and Visual Languages (VL). In fact multimedia software engineering can be considered as the discipline for systematic specification, design, substitution and verification of patterns that are often visual. Visual Languages give such contributions to MSE as: Visual notation for software specification, design and verification flow charts, ER diagram, Petri Net, UML visualization, visual programming languages etc. Multimedia Software Engineering and Software Engineering are like two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, we can apply software engineering principles to the design of multimedia systems. On the other hand, we can apply multimedia technologies to the practice of software engineering. In this paper we deal with the first of these topics. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how it is possible to design and implement complex multimedia software systems using a TeleAction Object (TAO) transformer based on XML technology with a component-based multimedia software engineering approach. The paper shows a complete process of dataflow transformation that represents TAOs in different ways (text, TAO_XML, etc) and at different levels of abstraction. The transformation process is a reversible one. We will also show the first experiences conducted jointly from DIS, DCSI, and DMI laboratories using a tool named TAO_XML_T. The tools component-based architecture is also discussed in the paper.

Experiences In Collaborative Learning

Cooperative learning is a paradigm of collaboration aimed to reach a common goal. The trend of using social networks and social media to deliver and exchange knowledge let us believe that collaboration skills must be strongly fostered to empower users to learn together and from each other, particularly in academia, to support the educational challenges of this century. In this paper we discuss the primary needs of a modern educational system and we present the ETCplus project, a model of cooperation which has as primary focus the students’ cooperation in an academic environment. Two distinct experiments in ETCplus project which involved cooperative learning and people from two international universities are discussed. The first experiment describes a system in a free environment that is left to evolve autonomously. The second experiment presents a system in a controlled environment that uses accelerator to speed up the learning process. The process of collaboration was designed on top of a shared smart platform. Post questionnaires gathered the students’ feedback and the metric for the evaluation of the collaboration were also given. The observation shows that cooperative learning produces better results when consonance and resonance are reached. The paper discusses the weakness and the strength of the ETCplus project.

Managing a software project leveraging students' cooperation: on the road to Eclipse (OTRE) experience

The world of software analysis, design and development has dramatically changed, owing to the availability of novel patterns and architectures derived from the Internet experience. In particular, the Jazz framework joined to the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment enables programmers working in a collaborative environment, by means of cooperation strategies. This gave birth to the idea of launching an experimental project for the teaching of software engineering disciplines in a collaborative environment. To this aim, students from different Universities are encouraged to conduct software development projects together, exploring new opportunities for intra-university collaboration, and promoting the sharing of knowledge and expertise gained during the projects. This paper reports on the state of the art of the OTRE project. In more details, OTRE stands for On The Road to Eclipse, and its ambition is developing a full-featured software environment for managing the annual conference of the Italian Eclipse Community. The vision, management, achievements and future development of the project will be addressed in this work.