Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

skip to main content
10.1145/2401796.2401802acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pageskoli-callingConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Back to school: how professional software developers develop and test software in an educational context

Published: 15 November 2012 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the research part of a collaboration between a large telecommunications company and Aalto University built around a programming course arranged by Aalto University for the company's software developers. This research involved examining several of the software developers' understandings of matters related to software development and quality in both a learning and a professional development context. The study uses qualitative analysis of questionnaires and interviews to produce descriptions of how the developers understood the software development process and testing and the information sources and needs they had when debugging.

References

[1]
M. Ahmadzadeh, D. Elliman, and C. Higgins. An analysis of patterns of debugging among novice computer science students. In ITiCSE '05: Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, pages 84--88, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM Press. ISBN 1-59593-024-8.
[2]
K. Ala-Mutka and H.-M. Järvinen. Assessment process for programming assignments. Advanced Learning Technologies, 2004. Proceedings. IEEE International Conference on, pages 181--185, 30 Aug.-1 Sept. 2004.
[3]
Y. Ben-David Kolikant. Students' alternative standards for correctness. In The Proceedings of the First International Computing Education Research Workshop, pages 37--46, 2005.
[4]
J. Bennedsen and M. E. Caspersen. Revealing the programming process. In Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, SIGCSE '05, pages 186--190, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM. ISBN 1-58113-997-7.
[5]
A. Berglund. Phenomenography as a way to research learning in computing. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology, 4(1), July 2006.
[6]
A. Berglund, I. Box, A. Eckerdal, R. Lister, and A. Pears. Learning educational research methods through collaborative research: the PhICER initiative. In Simon and M. Hamilton, editors, Proc. Tenth Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2008), volume 78 of Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, pages 35--42, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, 2008. Australian Computer Society.
[7]
S. Booth. Learning to program: A phenomenographic perspective. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 1992.
[8]
J. Corbin and A. Strauss. Basics of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, third edition, 2008.
[9]
S. H. Edwards. Improving student performance by evaluating how well students test their own programs. Journal on Educational Resources in Computing, 3(3): 1--24, 2003.
[10]
M. Eisenstadt. My hairiest bug war stories. Communications of the ACM, 40(4):30--37, 1997. ISSN 0001-0782.
[11]
S. Fitzgerald, G. Lewandowski, R. McCauley, L. Murphy, B. Simon, L. Thomas, and C. Zander. Debugging: Finding, fixing and flailing, a multi-institutional study of novice debuggers. Computer Science Education, 18(2):93--116, June 2008.
[12]
A. Hiisilä. Kurssinhallintajärjestelmä ohjelmoinnin perusopetuksen avuksi (Course management system for basic courses in programming). Master's thesis, Helsinki University of Technology, May 2005. URL http://goblin.tkk.fi/goblin/diplomityo.pdf. In Finnish, abstract in English.
[13]
J. Lave and E. Wenger. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
[14]
J. Lönnberg and A. Berglund. Students' understandings of concurrent programming. In R. Lister and Simon, editors, Proceedings of the Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling 2007), volume 88 of Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, pages 77--86, Koli, Finland, 2008. Australian Computer Society.
[15]
J. Lönnberg, A. Berglund, and L. Malmi. How students develop concurrent programs. In M. Hamilton and T. Clear, editors, Proceedings of the Eleventh Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2009), volume 95 of Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, pages 129--138, Wellington, New Zealand, 2009. Australian Computer Society.
[16]
J. Lönnberg, M. Ben-Ari, and L. Malmi. Visualising concurrent programs with dynamic dependence graphs. In 6th IEEE International Workshop on Visualizing Software for Understanding and Analysis (VISSOFT 2011), Williamsburg, VA, USA, Sept. 2011. IEEE.
[17]
J. Lönnberg, L. Malmi, and M. Ben-Ari. Evaluating a visualisation of the execution of a concurrent program. In Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling 2011), pages 39--48, Koli, Finland, Nov. 2011. ACM.
[18]
F. Marton and S. Booth. Learning and Awareness. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.
[19]
R. McCauley, S. Fitzgerald, G. Lewandowski, L. Murphy, B. Simon, L. Thomas, and C. Zander. Debugging: A review of the literature from an educational perspective. Computer Science Education, 18(2):67--92, 2008.
[20]
L. Murphy, G. Lewandowski, R. McCauley, B. Simon, L. Thomas, and C. Zander. Debugging: the good, the bad, and the quirky -- a qualitative analysis of novices' strategies. In Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, SIGCSE '08, pages 163--167, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM. ISBN 978-1-59593-799-5.
[21]
A. Pears. Conveying conceptions of quality through instruction. In Seventh International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC), pages 7--14, Oporto, Portugal, Oct. 2010. IEEE.
[22]
W. W. Royce. Managing the development of large software systems. In Proceedings of IEEE WESCON, pages 1--9. IEEE, Aug. 1970.
[23]
J. Sheard, Simon, M. Hamilton, and J. Lönnberg. Analysis of research into the teaching and learning of programming. In ICER '09: Proceedings of the fifth International Computing Education Research Workshop, pages 93--104, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM. ISBN 978-1-60558-615-1.
[24]
J. Sorva. The Same But Different --- Students' Understandings of Primitive and Object Variables. In A. Pears and L. Malmi, editors, The 8th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling '08, pages 5--15. Uppsala University, 2008.
[25]
I. Stamouli and M. Huggard. Object oriented programming and program correctness: the students' perspective. In ICER '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Computing education research, pages 109--118, New York, NY, USA, 2006. ACM Press. ISBN 1-59593-494-4.
[26]
I. Vessey. Expertise in debugging computer programs: An analysis of the content of verbal protocols. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, (16): 621--637, 1986.

Recommendations

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
Koli Calling '12: Proceedings of the 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
November 2012
187 pages
ISBN:9781450317955
DOI:10.1145/2401796
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • Univ. Eastern Finland: University of Eastern Finland
  • Tampere University of Technology
  • Univ. Turku: University of Turku
  • Aalto University

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 November 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. automatic assessment
  2. phenomenography
  3. professional software developers
  4. programming education

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

Koli Calling '12
Sponsor:
  • Univ. Eastern Finland
  • Univ. Turku

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 80 of 182 submissions, 44%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • 0
    Total Citations
  • 148
    Total Downloads
  • Downloads (Last 12 months)4
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 01 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media