Using Empirical Studies during Software Courses

Abstract

Abstract.A number of empirical studies using students as subjects has been carried out in the last few years. These studies are usually conducted as pilot experiments that allow researchers to fine-tune an experiment before deploying it in an industrial environment. Though one of the issues usually taken into account with these experiments is their external validity, other issues need to be considered, such as the usefulness of these experiments in the context of a software engineering course. This chapter concisely reports on three empirical studies performed at the Università degli Studi dell'Insubria during the ESERNET project and two other empirical studies that we carried out previously, all with students as subjects, so as to provide the context for a discussion on the research and the educational goals that should be taken into account when carrying out an experiment with students to make it successful from both an empirical and an educational viewpoint. Finally, we provide some advice on how to carry out empirical studies with students based on our experiences.

A Case to Do Empirical Study Using Educational Projects

“…On one side, students' experience about research data collection during educational projects is consistent with PG6 because there are empirical studies and data collection processes in industrial context (Carver, Jaccheri, Morasca, & Shull, 2003). On the other side, too much workload about research data collection process may conflict with PG7.…”

“…Jeffrey Carver etc. have touched this challenge in (Carver, Jaccheri, Morasca, & Shull, 2003), in which they identified four roles in empirical study using students as subjects: students, instructors, researchers and industrial, and listed the benefits and costs to each of them. And all these rolls should be taken into account when designing educational projects.…”

How Novice Software Engineers Apply User Interface Design Patterns: An Empirical Study

“…However, even with the small sample, the results from this study allowed us to test the applicability of the design patterns for user interface design with positive results. Additionally, students who do not have experience in industry may have similar skills as novice software engineers in the industry [17]. Thus, the feedback provided by the subjects was useful for identifying aspects that made it difficult to apply the design patterns and improvement opportunities.…”

Towards Hypotheses on Creativity in Software Development

“…Carver [15] have pointed out that the difference between students and novice professionals is being blurred, we identified one important problem with students experiment that students are lack of process experience compared with professionals [16], and designed a small warming-up project (KWIC, KeyWord-In-Context) to let students to be familiar with the field of software architecture, and remind them of the skills of programming using Java before carrying out the formal project (Mobile Robot) based on which this research is carried out.…”