Background: While Competency-Based Education (CBE) gains traction in Computer Science (CS) education, research focuses predominantly on mandatory implementations in Asian contexts, with limited evaluation of voluntary student engagement with CBE Learning Analytics (LA) tools in European Higher Education (HE).

Learning at scale often requires domain-specific automation such as assessment and feedback. An organization locked in to a general learning platform without these specialist automations limits its pedagogical offering. An ecosystem of interoperable, platform-agnostic microservices for domain-specific automation would solve this problem. To develop an effective ecosystem, a standard interface (API) for education microservices is required.

This study investigates teamwork dynamics in student software development projects through a mixed-method approach combining quantitative analysis of GitLab commit logs and qualitative survey data. We analyzed individual contributions across six project phases, comparing self-reported and actual contributions to measure discrepancies. Additionally, a survey captured insights on team leadership, conflict resolution, communication practices, and workload perceptions. Findings reveal that teams with minimal contribution discrepancies achieved higher project grades and exam pass rates. In contrast, teams with more significant discrepancies experienced lower performance, potentially due to role clarity and communication issues. These results underscore the value of shared leadership, structured conflict resolution, and regular feedback in fostering effective teamwork, offering educators strategies to enhance collaboration in software engineering education through self-reflection and balanced workload allocation.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, which can significantly impact an individual’s daily functioning and quality of life. Occupational therapy plays a crucial role in managing ADHD by fostering the development of skills needed for daily living and enhancing an individual’s ability to participate fully in school, home, and social situations. Recent studies highlight the potential of integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Socially Assistive Robots (SAR) to improve psychological treatments. This integration aims to overcome existing limitations in mental health therapy by providing tailored support and adapting to the unique needs of this sensitive group. However, there remains a significant gap in research exploring the combined use of these advanced technologies in ADHD therapy, suggesting an opportunity for novel therapeutic approaches.Thus, we integrated two advanced language models, ChatGPT-4 Turbo and Claude-3 Opus, into a robotic assistant to explore how well each model performs in robot-assisted interactions. Additionally, we have compared their performance in a simulated therapy scenario to gauge their effectiveness against a clinically validated customized model. The results of this study show that ChatGPT-4 Turbo excelled in performance and responsiveness, making it suitable for time-sensitive applications. Claude-3 Opus, on the other hand, showed strengths in understanding, coherence, and ethical considerations, prioritizing safe and engaging interactions. Both models demonstrated innovation and adaptability, but ChatGPT-4 Turbo offered greater ease of integration and broader language support. The selection between them hinges on the specific demands of ADHD therapy.

Integrating AI-driven tools in higher education is an emerging area with transformative potential. This paper introduces Iris, a chat-based virtual tutor integrated into the interactive learning platform Artemis that offers personalized, context-aware assistance in large-scale educational settings. Iris supports computer science students by guiding them through programming exercises and is designed to act as a tutor in a didactically meaningful way. Its calibrated assistance avoids revealing complete solutions, offering subtle hints or counter-questions to foster independent problem-solving skills. For each question, it issues multiple prompts in a Chain-of-Thought to GPT-3.5-Turbo. The prompts include a tutor role description and examples of meaningful answers through few-shot learning. Iris employs contextual awareness by accessing the problem statement, student code, and automated feedback to provide tailored advice. An empirical evaluation shows that students perceive Iris as effective because it understands their questions, provides relevant support, and contributes to the learning process. While students consider Iris a valuable tool for programming exercises and homework, they also feel confident solving programming tasks in computer-based exams without Iris. The findings underscore students' appreciation for Iris' immediate and personalized support, though students predominantly view it as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, human tutors. Nevertheless, Iris creates a space for students to ask questions without being judged by others.

Large language models, such as ChatGPT, possess the potential to revolutionize educational practices across various domains. Nonetheless, the deployment of these models can inadvertently foster academic dishonesty due to their facile accessibility. In practical courses like programming, where hands-on experience is crucial for learning, relying solely on ChatGPT can hinder students’ ability to engage with the exercises, consequently impeding the attainment of learning outcomes.This paper conducts an experimental analysis of GPT 3.5 and GPT 4, gauging their proficiencies and constraints in resolving a compendium of 22 programming exercises. We discern and categorize exercises based on ChatGPT’s ability to furnish viable solutions, alongside those that remain unaddressed. Moreover, an evaluation of the malleability of the solutions proposed by ChatGPT is undertaken. Subsequently, we propound a series of recommendations aimed at curtailing undue dependence on ChatGPT, thereby fostering authentic competency development in programming. The efficaciousness of these recommendations is underpinned by their integration into the design and delivery of an examination as part of the corresponding course.

The consistent effort and autonomous problem-solving required in programming instruction presents unique educational challenges, with plagiarism being a significant factor negatively correlated with independent programming performance. The prevalence of digital communication and information exchange further complicates this issue.This research paper aims to investigate and discern patterns of plagiarism among first-year computer science undergraduates. To investigate the research questions, we conducted three controlled experiments. The first experiment demonstrated that students were more likely to commit plagiarism when provided with the opportunity to do so. The second experiment corroborated this, showing a tendency for plagiarism among students who had not previously been exposed to any plagiarism mitigation strategies. The third experiment revealed that early awareness of plagiarism mitigation strategies leads to enhanced student performance, indicating that awareness of these measures acts as a stimulant for autonomous learning.

Interactive learning has been highly successful in computer science education, leading to improved planning and execution of programming courses. This is accomplished through the amalgamation of exercises equipped with real-time feedback mechanisms, fostering an environment conducive to iterative performance enhancement. Communication portals facilitate knowledge sharing between students and instructors, while computer-based exams alleviate the instructors’ workload.This paper focuses on the implementation of interactive learning in a programming course for first-year computer science students. The course, attended by an aggregate of 70 students, predominantly inexperienced in programming, is detailed, along with the digital resources employed during its development, implementation, and evaluation. This paper contributes to demonstrating the effectiveness of this methodology which showcase promising outcomes in a performance comparison between two courses with varying student numbers. The propitious outcomes emanating from this analysis undergird the proposition for extending this interactive learning methodology to a broader spectrum of computer science curricular offerings.

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated an unprecedented paradigm shift in higher education, compelling swift adaptation to online teaching methods. Consequently, the merits of remote education, including increased flexibility and geographic independence, were emphasized. At the same time, however, the problems associated with distance education became apparent, such as the lack of networking, collaborative learning, and social interactions. This situation led to detrimental effects on student motivation and learning outcomes in team-oriented software engineering courses.To address the dichotomy of learning preferences, one potential solution proposed is the simultaneous offering of online and onsite instruction. However, such a proposition presents substantial logistical challenges, necessitating additional resources, labor, and organizational overhead. This research paper presents a case study conducted during an introductory programming course, which serves as a precursor to a comprehensive, practical software engineering course. Upon easing of COVID-19 related restrictions, the instructors offered both online and onsite versions of this course and obtained student feedback through interviews to draw a comparative analysis.The study outcomes provide crucial insights into students’ preferences with respect to learning modalities in higher education, particularly within the software engineering discipline. The results indicate a predominant preference for the onsite version of the introductory course. Reasons attributed to this preference include enhanced social interactions, greater enjoyment, and increased motivation, thus highlighting the irreplaceable value of face-to-face education.

Practical software engineering courses incorporate industrial clients to present a more realistic environment for the students. Clients introduce problem statements to students in the predevelopment phase. These documents describe the project’s vision, scope, requirements, and acceptance criteria. An unreasonable trade-off between efficiency and creativity can lead to unfulfilled client expectations or very constrained creative space for students. In problem statements, a good balance between freedom and efficiency helps foster such a creative-friendly environment that facilitates creative thinking and innovative approaches. This paper describes a case study in a software engineering project course among 17 projects (with over 100 students) in the past two semesters with real industrial clients. We develop criteria to classify problem statements into three main types. Innovation and creativity are measured through self-evaluation surveys and project documentation. The findings show that a problem statement with a known problem, fewer than 15 requirements, and fewer than 30 constraint word occurrences has the highest potential to strike the balance to encourage creativity and achieve project success.

Together with many success stories, promises such as the increase in production speed and the improvement in stakeholders’ collaboration have contributed to making agile a transformation in the software industry in which many companies want to take part. However, driven either by a natural and expected evolution or by contextual factors that challenge the adoption of agile methods as prescribed by their creator(s), software processes in practice mutate into hybrids over time. Are these still agile? In this article, we investigate the question: what makes a software development method agile? We present an empirical study grounded in a large-scale international survey that aims to identify software development methods and practices that improve or tame agility. Based on 556 data points, we analyze the perceived degree of agility in the implementation of standard project disciplines and its relation to used development methods and practices. Our findings suggest that only a small number of participants operate their projects in a purely traditional or agile manner (under 15 percent). That said, most project disciplines and most practices show a clear trend towards increasing degrees of agility. Compared to the methods used to develop software, the selection of practices has a stronger effect on the degree of agility of a given discipline. Finally, there are no methods or practices that explicitly guarantee or prevent agility. We conclude that agility cannot be defined solely at the process level. Additional factors need to be taken into account when trying to implement or improve agility in a software company. Finally, we discuss the field of software process-related research in the light of our findings and present a roadmap for future research.

Open-ended textual exercises facilitate the comprehension of problem-solving skills. Students can learn from their mistakes when teachers provide individual feedback. However, courses with hundreds of students cause a heavy workload for teachers: providing individual feedback is mostly a manual, repetitive, and time-consuming activity.

In the last 30 years, the demands placed on software engineers have increased considerably. This is because the systems they develop increase in complexity, size, and criticality as well. Novel system types like adaptive systems or cyber physical systems and new technologies, like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, change the technology landscape. Professionals creating such systems hence need to stay on the cutting edge to face the challenges of the future.

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the first conference on software engineering, organized by NATO, which took place in 1968 in Garmisch, Germany. At that time, the terms “software crisis” and “software engineering” have been coined. Both terms have accompanied and shaped computer science in research, practice and education over the last 50 years. This anniversary is reason enough to look back, what has been achieved, but also to look forward. In this panel discussion, the challenges seen at the time will be reflected from today’s perspective, and successes and real progress over the last 50 years will be discussed, with an emphasis on the education of software engineering. How close are teaching and learning aligned with industry needs and the daily tasks of software developers? Future challenges and necessary further developments will be discussed together with the plenary. The panel uses the fishbowl approach with one open space so that people from the audience can join the discussion.

The increasing number of students in computer science courses leads to high efforts in manual assessment of exercises. Existing assessment systems are not designed for exercises with immediate feedback in large classes. In this paper, we present an AuTomated assEssment Management System for interactive learning.

Modern capstone courses use agile methods to deliver and demonstrate software early in the project. However, a simple demonstration of functional and static aspects does not provide real-world software usage context, although this is integral to understand software requirements. Software engineering involves capabilities such as creativity, imagination, and interaction, which are typically not emphasized in software engineering courses. A more engaging, dynamic way of presenting software prototypes is needed to demonstrate the context in which the software is used. We combine agile methods, scenario-based design, and theatrical aspects into software theater, an approach to present visionary scenarios using techniques borrowed from theater and film, including props and humor. We describe the software theater workflow, provide examples, and explain patterns to demonstrate its potential. We illustrate two large case studies in which we teach students with varying levels of experience to apply software theater: a capstone course involving industrial customers with 100 students and an interactive lecture-based course with 400 students. We empirically evaluated the use of software theater in both courses. Our evaluations show that students can understand and apply software theater within one semester and that this technique increases their motivation to prepare demonstrations even early in the project. Software theater is more creative, memorable, dynamic, and engaging than normal demonstration techniques and brings fun into education.

Learning to apply computer science requires practical experience and cannot only be taught in theory. Interactive learning is a new approach: educators teach small chunks of content in short cycles of theory, example, exercise, solution and feedback. It is based on active, computer-based and experiential learning and focuses on immediate feedback to improve the learning experience. It allows students to reflect about the content incrementally. It includes hands-on activities, guidance by the instructor and increases students' motivation and engagement. This workshop describes experiences of multiple interactive learning courses for large classes, including exercises for (1) multiple choice quizzes, (2) interactive tutorials, (3) interactive programming exercises, (4) interactive modeling, and (5) team activities. Based on our experience, we present multiple case studies and concrete examples of interactive exercises. While the assessment of many exercises can be (semi-)automated, teaching assistants in the classroom manually assess other exercises. We show how educators can integrate these exercises into large classes without significantly increasing their effort. Participants should bring a laptop to this workshop.

Games development brings fun into the software engineering curriculum, but it is a practical activity that educators cannot teach in traditional lecture-based environments. Including pedagogical aspects of problem-based, cooperative, blended and experiential learning is necessary to achieve a high learning experience.

Globalization has long since found its way into software engineering. Many companies transfer part of their development activities to distributed countries in order to ensure their global competitiveness, gain access to local markets and react to the prevailing lack of specialized workforce. The global distribution of project teams introduces new challenges: Geographic separation, different time zones, remote communications, and culture and language barriers make the collaboration between team members more difficult.

Software development has to cope with uncertainties and changing requirements that constantly arise in the development process. Agile methods address this challenge by adopting an incremental development process and delivering working software frequently. However, current validation techniques used in sprint reviews are not sufficient for emerging applications based on ubiquitous technologies. To fill this gap, we propose a new way of demonstration called Software Theater. Based on ideas from theater plays, it aims at presenting scenario-based demonstration in a theatrical way to highlight new features, new user experience and new technical architecture in an integrated performance. We have used Software Theater in more than twenty projects and the result is overall positive.

There is an acknowledged need for teaching realistic software development in project courses. The design space for such courses is wide, ranging from single-semester to two-semester courses, from single-client to multicustomer courses, from local to globally distributed courses, and from toy projects to projects with real clients. The challenge for a nontrivial project course is how to make the project complex enough to enrich students’ software engineering experience, yet realistic enough to have a teaching environment that does not unduly burden students or the instructor. We describe a methodology for project courses that is realizable for instructors, improves students’ skills, and leads to viable results for industry partners. In particular, recent advances in release management and collaboration workflows reduce the effort of students and instructors during delivery and increase the quality of the deliverables. To enable release and feedback management, we introduce Rugby, an agile process model based on Scrum that allows reacting to changing requirements. To improve early communication, we use Tornado, a scenario-based design approach that emphasizes the use of informal models for the interaction between clients and students. The combination of Rugby and Tornado allows students to deal with changing requirements, produce multiple releases, and obtain client feedback through the duration of the course. We describe our experience with more than 300 students working on 40 projects with external clients over a 4-year period. In the latest instance of our course, the students have produced more than 7000 builds with 600 releases for eleven clients. In an evaluation of the courses, we found that the introduction of Rugby and Tornado significantly increased students’ technical skills, especially with respect to software engineering, usability engineering, and configuration management, as well as their nontechnical skills such as communication with the client, teamwork, presentation, and demo management. Finally, we discuss how other instructors can adapt the course concept.