Yonglei Tao

Work in progress - introducing usability concepts in early phases of software development

Usability is critical for the success of interactive software systems. However, usability evaluation is rarely taught as an indispensable element of the development process in software design courses. On analyzing usability errors students made in their programming projects, we found some usability errors, although revealed via the visual design of a user interface, resulting from earlier design decisions. It is beneficial to introduce usability concepts in early phases of software development. In this paper, we present an approach to integrating usability evaluation into behavioral modeling for interactive systems. Early usability evaluation is intended to help students obtain a better understanding on usability and encourage them to make conscious effort in seeking usability throughout the development process

Component- vs. application-level MVC architecture

We describe our approach to teaching the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture for GUI applications. Swing adopts MVC at component level. We use it as a case study to illustrate features of MVC and also help students learn to use the tool for programming projects. To encourage them to see beyond a specific tool, we assign students a project to build a domain-specific framework for GUI applications using MVC at application level. This project allows students to learn hands on the MVC architecture as well as other design techniques in a new context. Our two-semester experience shows that a tool-based case study with a follow-up effort as such is productive in teaching practical design techniques.

Enhancing student learning in database courses with large data sets

Rapidly increasing storage device capacities at ever decreasing costs have resulted in mushrooming of publicly available large data sets on the Web. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to teaching relational database course by using such data repositories. We demonstrate our approach using the Amazon.com product database, though the approach is generic and is applicable to other data repositories. The Amazon database is supposedly the largest product database ever in existence. We have used the Amazon Web Services API and .NET/C# application to extract a subset of the product database to enhance student learning in a relational database course. This realistic data served various activities of the course and provided a rich backdrop to demonstrate more interesting features of SQL and Oracle cost-based query optimization. Central to the course is a semester-long team project. We discuss the details of data extraction from Amazon.com, conceptual and logical data modeling, logical and physical database design, database creation and data loading, database querying, and database application development.

Teaching Software Design Using a Case Study on Model Transformation

Modeling is a fundamental concept in software engineering. While model evolution is an essential topic due to the popularity of object-oriented design and iterative development, model transformation has not received adequate attention in the software engineering education community. Model transformation involves a change of the viewpoint from which a design problem is viewed and a change of the structure of the design model. As such, it makes possible for instructors to underscore important design concepts. We in this paper present a case study on model transformation. Initial classroom use of the case study demonstrated that model transformation is a worthy topic and can offer students a unique learning experience which might not be easily achievable otherwise.

Work in Progress: Open Source Software as the Basis of Developing Software Design Case Studies

Case studies are often used as a vehicle to introduce fundamental principles and techniques in a software engineering course. However, finding a realistic yet manageable application as the basis of developing a case study is challenging to the instructors. We describe our preliminary experience with using an open source product, JUnit, to develop a case study. We also describe using a follow-up exercise to exploit potential benefits of such a case study. We believe that case studies based on open source software can help prepare our students for the real challenges of professional software development

Work in progress — An opportunistic approach for learning web application development

Opportunistic software development is not only a common practice, but also of great educational value. In this paper, we describe our experience with guiding students in an opportunistic approach to learning web programming. Our observations indicate that it is an effective approach for introducing topics that cross the boundaries of different technologies.

Interface-Based Object-Oriented Design with Mock Objects

Interfaces are fundamental in object-oriented systems. One of the principles of reusable object-oriented design, according to Gamma et al., is program to an interface, not an implementation. Interface-based systems display three key characteristics – flexibility, extensibility, and pluggability. Designing with interfaces is therefore a better way of building object-oriented systems. Getting students in introductory software engineering and design courses to program to interfaces and develop interface-based systems is a challenge. This paper presents our experiences with the use of mock objects to promote interface-based design and effective unit testing in software engineering and design courses.