Blockchain technologies for rewards in education are gaining attraction as a promising approach to motivate student learning and promote academic achievement. By providing tangible rewards for educational attainment and engagement, such as digital tokens, educators can motivate learners to take a more active role in their learning and increase their sense of ownership and responsibility for their academic outcomes. In this context, this work proposes the Software Engineering Skill (SES) token as a way of rewarding students in order to improve their experiences in Software Engineering Education (SEE). We performed a proof of concept and conclude that SES token can be deployed in a platform to support SEE.
Blockchain is an incipient technology that offers many strengths compared to traditional systems, such as decentralization, transparency and traceability. However, if the technology is to be used for processing personal data, complementary mechanisms must be identified that provide support for building systems that meet security and data protection requirements. We study the integration of off-chain capabilities in blockchain-based solutions moving data or computational operations outside the core blockchain network. We develop a thorough analysis of the European data protection regulation and…
The creation of blockchain-based software applications requires today considerable technical knowledge, particularly in software design and programming. This is regarded as a major barrier in adopting this technology in business and making it accessible to a wider audience. As a solution, no-code and low-code approaches have been proposed that require only little or no programming knowledge for creating full-fledged software applications. In this paper we review academic approaches from the discipline of model-driven engineering as well as industrial no-code and low-code development platforms …
Software Engineering is the process of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach that has significant impact on large-scale and complex software development. Scores of well-established software process models have long been adopted in the software development life cycle that pour stakeholders towards the completion of final software product development. Within the boundary of advanced technology, various emerging and futuristic technology is evolving that really need the attention of the software engineering community whether the conventional software process techniques are capable to i…
Blockchain has attracted broad interests to build decentralised applications. Blockchain has attracted broad interests to build decentralised applications. However, developing such applications without introducing vulnerabilities is hard for developers, not the least because the deployed code is immutable and can be called by anyone with access to the network. Model-driven engineering (MDE) helps to reduce those risks, by combining proven code snippets as per the model specification, which is easier to understand than source code. Therefore, in this paper, we present an approach for integrated…
Integrating LLMs in Software Engineering Education: Motivators, Demotivators, and a Roadmap Towards a Framework for Finnish Higher Education Institutes
A critical component of any blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform is the consensus algorithm. Blockchain consensus algorithms are the primary vehicle for the nodes within a blockchain network to reach an agreement. In recent years, many blockchain consensus algorithms have been proposed mainly for private and permissioned blockchain networks. However, the performance of these algorithms and their reliability in hostile environments or the presence of byzantine and other network failures are not well understood. In addition, the testing and validation of blockchain applicat…
A Systematic Analysis of Higher Education on Software Engineering in the Netherlands
Open University（开放大学）；Eindhoven University of Technology（埃因霍温理工大学）；University of Florence（佛罗伦萨大学）；University of Twente（特文特大学）；Utrecht University（乌得勒支大学）
Academic Integrity and Emotional Responses to Inappropriate LLM Use in Software Engineering Education
University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）；CESAR School（CESAR学院）；University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa（夏威夷大学马诺阿分校）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (UFRPE)（伯南布哥联邦农村大学）；Radboud University（拉德堡德大学）
This white paper argues that formal methods need to be better rooted in higher education curricula for computer science and software engineering programmes of study. To this end, it advocates (i) improved teaching of formal methods; (ii) systematic highlighting of formal methods within existing, `classical' computer science courses; and (iii) the inclusion of a compulsory formal methods course in computer science and software engineering curricula. These recommendations are based on the observations that (a) formal methods are an essential and cost-effective means to increase software quality;…
Designing blockchain-based applications is a tedious task. Compared to traditional software engineering, software architects cannot rely on previous experiences or proven practices, often formalized as software patterns. Also, the selection of an adequate blockchain technology is difficult without deep knowledge of the technology. This paper introduces Harmonica, a framework for the design and implementation of a blockchain-based application. This framework is divided in three parts: a decision-making engine to recommend a blockchain technology and blockchain-based software patterns relying on…
Blockchain has received expanding interest from various domains. Institutions, enterprises, governments, and agencies are interested in Blockchain potential to augment their software systems. The unique requirements and characteristics of Blockchain platforms raise new challenges involving extensive enhancement to conventional software development processes to meet the needs of these domains. Software engineering approaches supporting Blockchain-oriented developments have been slow to materialize, despite proposals in the literature, and they have yet to be objectively analyzed. A critical app…
Contribution: Determine and analyze the gap between software practitioners' education outlined in the 2014IEEE/ACM Software Engineering Education Knowledge (SEEK) and industrial needs pointed by Wikipedia articles referenced in Stack Overflow (SO) posts. Background: Previous work has uncovered deficiencies in the coverage of computer fundamentals, people skills, software processes, and human-computer interaction, suggesting rebalancing. Research Questions: 1) To what extent are developers' needs, in terms of Wikipedia articles referenced in SO posts, covered by the SEEK knowledge units? 2) How…
Background: Software project management activities help to introduce software process models in Software Engineering courses. However, these activities should be adequately aligned with the learning outcomes and support student's progression. Objective: Present and evaluate an approach to help students acquire theoretical and practical knowledge and experience real-world software projects' challenges. The approach combines a serious game and a design-implement task in which students develop a controlled-scale software system. Method: To evaluate our approach, we analyzed the students' percepti…
Requirement Engineering (RE) is a Software Engineering (SE) process of defining, documenting, and maintaining the requirements from a problem. It is one of the most complex processes of SE because it addresses the relation between customer and developer. RE learning may be abstract and complex for most students because many of them cannot visualize the subject directly applied. Through the advancement of technology, Virtual Reality (VR) hardware is becoming increasingly more accessible, and it is not rare to use it in education. Little research and systematic studies explain the integration be…
Specific testing solutions targeting blockchain-based software are gaining huge attention as blockchain technologies are being increasingly incorporated into enterprise systems. As blockchain-based software enters production systems, it is paramount to follow proper engineering practices, ensure the required level of testing, and assess the readiness of the developed system. The existing research aims at addressing the testing-related issues and challenges of engineering blockchain-based software by providing suitable techniques and tools. However, like any emerging discipline, the best practi…
How Software Engineering Students Use LLMs to Write Research Papers: An Experience Report
University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）；CESAR School（CESAR学院）；University of Bari（巴里大学）；Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (UFRPE)（伯南布哥联邦农村大学）；University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa（夏威夷大学马诺阿分校）
Modern society is diverse, multicultural, and multifaceted. Because of these characteristics, we are currently observing an increase in the debates about equity, diversity, and inclusion in different areas, especially because several groups of individuals are underrepresented in many environments. In computer science and software engineering, it seems counter-intuitive that these areas, which are responsible for creating technological solutions and systems for billions of users around the world, do not reflect the diversity of the society to which it serves. In trying to solve this diversity c…
LLM Use, Cheating, and Academic Integrity in Software Engineering Education
University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）；University of Hawaii at Manoa（夏威夷大学马诺阿分校）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (UFRPE)（伯南布哥联邦农村大学）；Radboud University（拉德堡德大学）
Teaching Empathy in Software Engineering Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）；Federal Rural University of Pernambuco（伯南布哥联邦农村大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Radboud University（拉德堡德大学）；University of Otago（奥塔哥大学）；University of Hawaii at Manoa（夏威夷大学马诺阿分校）
