Robert F. Coyne

Using an issue-based model in a team-based software engineering course

Communication in software engineering projects becomes a bottleneck as the number of participants increases. As todays software systems grow in complexity and size, teaching effective communication skills in software engineering courses becomes a critical issue. The paper is an experience report on the use of an issue based model for teaching meeting procedures in a team based software engineering project course (7 teams, 25 students). We observed that, when carefully introduced in the classroom, the use of an issue based model provided significant benefits, even with such limited tool support as a word processor template. More specifically, we observed that students conducted meetings more efficiently, that they maintained a more complete record of the issues under discussion, and that intra team communication was significantly improved.

Teaching Iterativ & Collaborative Design: Lessons and Directions

We describe the motivation for an ongoing series of experiments to enhance a team-based object-oriented software engineering course with a collaborative design tool. The course, which is taught in a single semester to senior undergraduates has achieved success in several dimensions, in particular in its application of object-oriented methods for analysis and design to the associated course project. We have recently started to increase the realism of the course by involving the students increasingly in iterative development, in particular on the system design level. We analyze some of the problems emerging from this decision and identify the key issues that must be addressed to allow for iteration in a single project course. A specific prototype information modeling environment supporting collaborative design is described and its applicability in the classroom is illustrated based on actual material from a recent version of the course.

Teaching More Comprehensive Model-Based Software Engineering: Experience with Objectory's Use Case Approach

This paper is an experience report and discussion of an experiment in teaching and using a comprehensive model-based methodology and tool (Objectory) in a large software project. The paper describes in detail the preparation of such an experiment, states our assumptions during the planning phase, and presents the results together with a discussion of the most important issues. We observed certain improvements in the productivity and understanding of the students, while discovering a number of non-trivial organizational and pedagogical issues still remaining to be solved (e.g. communication latency and breakdown; project set up time; training time etc.). We believe that this paper will provide valuable insights to the reader at a number of different levels: 1. To those interested in state of the art software engineering methodologies; 2. To those interested in Objectory per se; 3. To those interested in the issues of introducing a sophisticated modeling methodology into a pilot project involving a large number of participants.

Support system for different-time different-place collaboration for concurrent engineering

To be effective in practice, concurrent engineering requires access to and organization of knowledge accumulated over time, product versions, and customers. More important, separate knowledge resources have to be shared and coordinated over space and time if successful design is to be accomplished. The authors, address the nature of communication in design, especially across disciplines, and the support systems that facilitate better communication. While a lot of research effort is being expended on same-time communications within a group, they consider, as well, the need for, and the problems associated with, different-time, different-placed communication. they present these views in connection with an on-going development effort, n-dim.<<ETX>>

Learning in design: an EDRC (US) perspective

We identify four dimensions along which learning processes can play a role in design tasks: the generation and refinement of knowledge using machine learning techniques; knowledge acquisition, the transfer of knowledge to the machine during system development; the transfer of knowledge in a design support system back to its user; and the development of design repositories via the systematic recording, analysis, classification and re-use of design knowledge. We introduce six design systems at the EDRC at various stages of development that collectively span the learning dimensions mentioned above. We describe their individual domains, tasks, structures, performance and planned extensions. We also discuss the issues encountered in developing these systems and the solutions proposed to resolve them.

Model-Based Software Engineering in Larger Scale Project Courses

ABSTRACT In this paper we describe the organization of a project course in model-based software engineering currently taught at Carnegie Mellon University. We mention several limitations encountered, in particular on the system design level, when we involved the students increasingly in iterative development. We motivate the need to include artifact modeling in the course to better support iterative development as well as the need for generalized modeling to provide a better integration of artifact models with models for project management, communication and documentation. We present a candidate development methodology that supports artifact modeling and illustrate a general information modeling environment that complements and extends artifact modeling to better support iterative team-based software engineering.