This work in progress research paper describes the development and utilization of ChatVis, a novel tool designed to enhance collaboration and teamwork, key learning outcomes emphasized in engineering and computing curricula by industry employers and accrediting bodies such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Instructors implement project-based learning to help students develop these skills, often using communication platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord. Despite the availability of tools supporting teamwork and collaborative learning, a truly non-invasive method for collecting and evaluating interaction and team dynamics remains elusive. ChatVis addresses this gap by enabling instructors to assess team dynamics and individual contributions effectively without disrupting student workflow. Deployed in a C Programming course at a university in Mexico, ChatVis involved 33 students in a mini project, significantly improving student interaction, communication, and engagement. Instructors were able to visualize and provide targeted feedback on student engagement and team dynamics, thereby enhancing the quality of student work. Future work will extend this preliminary study with a comprehensive analysis aimed at determining the statistical significance and broader impacts of ChatVis.

This WIP paper performs a systematic mapping study to investigate the evolution and trends in object-oriented design education (OOD), a critical aspect in software engineering curriculum. Based on 228 publications, the study illuminates significant pedagogical shifts in object-oriented design (OOD), distinguishing it from object-oriented programming (OOP). It also identified areas lacking in-depth research coverage. The research questions guiding this investigation include: 1) Which publication channels predominantly disseminate OODE research? 2) What teaching approaches are most reported in OODE research, and how have these approaches evolved over time? Our findings indicate a trend towards interactive and student-centered teaching methods yet underscore a pressing need for empirical studies to validate these educational strategies. This study aims to provide actionable insights for educators and curriculum developers to refine OOD teaching practices, aligning them more closely with evolving industry standards. Our future work will focus on in-depth analysis of our primary studies to gain insights on the impact of emerging technologies such as AI and VR on learning outcomes in OOD. We also plan to develop guidelines for effective integration of OOD in software engineering curriculum.

Project-based learning (PjBL) is a desirable form of active learning that facilitate student engagement, team work and problem solving. Current literature in PjBL have studied the merits, demerits, implementation strategies and the impact of PjBL on student performance. However, PjBL has not been properly studied from the lens of Industry Standard Tools and Practices (IST&Ps). Currently, the specific learning effectiveness of PjBL vis-a-vis IST&Ps are largely unknown. To provide insight into the effectiveness of PjBL in relation to IST&Ps, we implemented PjBL in our class using 5 popular IST (SQL, Atlassian Jira, GitHub, Jenkins, and planning poker) and 3 most common Agile Development practices as ISP. We collected data from 120 students juniors and seniors using RIMMS as our instrument. Data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our preliminary results shows that IST&P has significantly positive impact over learning effectiveness, and students' engagement.

This research to practice full paper presents our investigation into the use of gamification in teaching cybersecurity awareness to students. Although there are evidences of increasing research activities in cybersecurity, cyberattacks continue to be pervasive. Academic institutions are largely responsible for educating and producing skilled professionals with cybersecurity competences. However, cybersecurity education can be challenging, especially to smaller institutions, usually characterized by meagre resources. In literature, one of the beneficial pedagogical methods for teaching cybersecurity awareness is gamification, which is based on constructivist theoretical framework. While this method has proved very useful, one major challenge is that gamification platforms can be costly to develop and difficult to maintain. This may discourage smaller institutions from using gamification to teach cybersecurity awareness. Freemium gamified platforms e.g., Kahoot! can offer an alternative that is affordable, easy to use and requires very little to no overhead cost. The research questions under investigation are: what is the impact of gamification (as an instructional method) on students’ learning of cybersecurity awareness?, which game elements and what aspect of gamification best motivate students?. Using questionnaire, we asked the students, from a small university in Northwestern Pennsylvania, USA, to rate their knowledge and awareness of cyberattacks. Afterwards, we taught a cyber awareness module with 5 learning objectives to these students using gamification in Kahoot! platform. At the end of the class, we administered another questionnaire to the students and asked them to rate their knowledge and awareness of those same cyberattacks. Our analysis and statistical results show that gamification is an effective technique for knowledge acquisition in cybersecurity awareness. Furthermore, students are mostly motivated by game elements that give them a sense of achievement. Finally we found that students are more interested in the knowledge acquisition aspect of gamification rather than the entertainment and winning aspects. The results of our study may be beneficial for instructional design of introductory cybersecurity awareness courses.

For more than 2 decades, online or e-learning has been the major approach to distant education. However, a new variant of online learning AKA emergency remote teaching or ERT has emerged and increasingly becoming popular. ERT refers to the temporary transition of educational activities (instruction, assessment, advising) from the traditional to online to avert the crisis. This differs from a typical online or e-learning wherein educational activities are intended to be delivered online and are thus carefully designed, planned and implemented to fulfill this intention. With regards to existing literature, few publications have identified the differences between online learning and ERT, and expressed concerns over the quality of educational activities in ERT. Currently, studies that validate student learning experience in ERT are lacking in literature. ERT is an emerging pedagogical approach that was widely adopted in Spring 2020 due to COVID-19, hence it is imperative to validate its impact in students’ learning experience as well as instructors’ teaching experience. In this research, we focus on the following research question: what factors affect students’ learning experience and instructors’ teaching experience in an emergency remote teaching? To answer this question, we collected data from 240 students and 98 instructors during the implementation of ERT in our institution in Spring and Fall of 2020. Using a combination of ANOVA and Turkey’s Honestly Significantly Difference (HSD), we analyze the data to determine the factors that can be used to predict student learning experience and teaching experience in ERT. Our results of this study will inspire more studies in ERT and inform effective delivery of instructional activities in time of crisis.

This Full-Length Research Paper presents findings from a scoping review of diversity research in engineering and computing education in the 2019–2020 FIE conference proceedings. The purpose of this review was to determine present-day themes and contributions of diversity research and identify opportunities for further research. Through the scoping review process, we identified 21 out of 776 papers that focused on a diverse population in engineering or computing, utilized an established methodology, and presented results. From these selected papers, three themes emerged. The first was about minority student experiences of discrimination and biases, and their resulting feelings of inclusivity and belonging. Results showed that these experiences and feelings negatively impacted success factors such as GPA and graduation in engineering or computing. A second theme was that financial need is a substantial deterrent to degrees in engineering and computing. Lastly, there were several investigations of the experiences of diverse students during active learning interventions in the classroom. The mixed results do not present a clear picture of how active learning might impact minority student success. Based on the existing work, we make recommendations for future diversity research. In general, much more quantitative, intervention-based research is needed. Several difficulties have been established, but almost no solutions have been identified.

The term cloud computing is used to describe a pool of configurable virtualized computing resources (databases, software, storage, network, servers, etc.) delivered as a service via the Internet. The demand for cloud computing professionals continues to increase, yet academic institutions make little effort to integrate cloud computing into the computing curriculum. Lack of cloud computing resources has been identified as a major hindrance to teaching and learning cloud computing in higher education. This workshop aims to explore resources that could help computing educators teach cloud computing to students. Through hands-on activities, participants will learn about the various resources, tools, and technologies that are freely available for teaching and learning cloud computing.

This Full Paper (Research) presents an analysis on the competences in software testing for the fresh graduates in computer science. Software Testing education (ST) is receiving increasing attention in literature, recent studies have evaluated instructional methods used in ST education. However, analysis of competences (skills, knowledge, and ability) required in ST education are lacking in literature. Competences play critical roles in curriculum development e.g., they inform the design of student learning outcomes, learning objectives and program outcomes. This full paper in the research category aims to analyze competences in ST education and then examine the gap between these competences and the current ST curriculum. Using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we collect 2033 job descriptions from three popular job portals (indeed, monster, and career builder) in the USA and Canada. Also, we collected course syllabi from 20 universities offering ST courses and use these to assess the current curriculum in ST. We analyzed the data using thematic analysis and found that the current software testing curricula do not always teach or equip students with some of the soft skills they require to be successful in software testing career. For instance, our result shows that soft skills such as teamwork, communication, leadership, which are often required by software testing employers are not always taught in ST courses.

Data analytics has been recently adopted by many researchers and professionals working with data in both academic and industry. With the increase in demand for data analysts, there has been a parallel growth in data analytics training programs within companies and educational institutions. In this paper, we introduce the concepts of data analytics and present practical examples using Microsoft Access and Excel. The four types of data analytics (i.e., descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive) are discussed and practical examples are provided. For descriptive analytics, we discuss the data properties and models and present examples of database design and implementation in Microsoft Access. The example for diagnostic analytics involves an ergonomic assessment application in Microsoft Excel to identify the sources of ergonomic risks in work environments. Predictive analytics examples include regression and clustering models implementation in Microsoft Excel. Finally, the prescriptive analytics example involves optimizing the snow removal process in a local city by developing an optimization model and its implementation in Excel. These examples will help students understand data analytics and be able to implement the different data analytics models in Microsoft Access and Excel.

Computing and engineering educators often adopt various instructional methods, e.g., flipped classroom and project-based learning, to facilitate the teaching and learning process. Extant literature has analyzed the benefits and demerits of these instructional methods. Moreover, there are considerable amount of literature that have proposed a set of professional competences required by employers in engineering and computing professions. Currently, there is paucity studies that have investigated the instructional methods that best support the delivery and acquisition of core professional competences by instructors and students respectively. This creates a gap in literature and leave some research questions unanswered. For instance, which instructional methods best support instructors to deliver professional competences such as problem solving, teamwork and critical thinking? On the other hand, which instructional methods best enable students to acquire professional competences? The aim of this on-going research is to report the progress we have made in our attempt to close this gap, answer this research question, and thus contribute to knowledge. Accordingly, we present a set of instructional methods and professional competences in computing and engineering as identified from extensive literature. Secondly, we discuss the Randomized Block Factorial Design (RBF) which we intend to use for validating our hypothesis. We also, presented our hypothesis and research question. Finally, we discuss our data collection strategy, research instrument and its validation. We intend to perform a rigorous data analysis and report the complete research in our future.

Cloud computing has emerged to be one of the leading professional competences desired by modern day employers, especially in the computing profession. We use computing as an umbrella term that includes Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, and other related courses. The benefits and value proposition of cloud computing have made it a desirable course to be taught across computing curricular. However, teaching and learning cloud computing comes with daunting challenges that often discourage educators. As a result, cloud computing is yet to be part of the computing curriculum in a vast majority of higher institutions in the USA; thereby denying students the myriad career and employment opportunities peculiar to their peers with cloud computing skills. The aim of this panel therefore is to analyze the challenges of teaching cloud computing, proffer solutions to those challenges, and develop an approach that can be adopted by computing instructors who desire to incorporate cloud computing competences into their curriculum. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to learn and access resources provided by 'AWS Educate' for teaching and learning cloud computing.

This full paper in the research to practice category reports an effort to investigate the impact of instructional methods on the student performance in a flipped classroom. Flipped classroom is a pedagogical approach that has received a significant research attention in recent times. Yet, current studies have not explored the effect of instructional methods, made available by internet and multimedia technologies, on students' performance in flipped classroom. This creates a gap in both the knowledge and practice of flipped classroom. In our effort to fill this gap and contribute to knowledge, we designed an exploratory study to investigate how each of the five instructional methods used in engineering education affect students' performance in a flipped classroom. Accordingly, we registered 35 students into an Information Systems (IS) core course and divided them into two classes (identified using their section codes, 01 and 1E) taught by the same professor. Class 01 (the experimental group) was taught with a flipped model while Class 1E (the control group) was taught with the traditional model. Data was collected from two sources, students' grades and questionnaire responses. After analyzing the data, we made some findings that would be useful to professors practicing flipped classroom. We summarize the key findings as follows: (a) Instructional methods that are interactive, interdependent and peer-focused are most preferred by students and offer greater learning experience. (b) Students who indicated Connect Interactive as their most preferred instructional method, in flipped classroom, performed better than their peers by a range of 25%. We consider this study to be exploratory in nature because of its relatively small sample size. Yet, we provide discussions, analysis and recommendations that can inform the practice of flipped pedagogy. It also provides a foundation for further research on the relationship between instructional methods and student performance in flipped classroom.

This full paper in the research category investigates the core competencies required in Computer and Information Systems (CIS) education. We define competency, in the context of existing literature, to mean skills, knowledge and disposition required in a given profession. Skills can be hard skills or soft skills. Insight and awareness of competencies are core imperatives in curriculum design and also play a critical role in the development of academic programs, courses, and syllabi. Despite their importance, there are limited studies that investigate and provide the core Information Systems (IS) competencies especially from an industry perspective. The research question at hand is: What core competencies are required in a Computer and Information Systems program from an industry perspective' To answer this question, this paper conducts a thematic analysis to analyze 132 CIS-related-industry job descriptions collected from five currently-popular job portals (indeed.com, monster.com, careerBuilder.com, idealist.org and simplyhired.com). We analyzed this data to contribute a set of competencies that can support academic endeavors, such as curriculum revision in the Computer Information Systems profession. Furthermore, we provide a classification of those competencies into knowledge, skills and disposition. CIS instructors and academic program developers can use the findings of this research to facilitate the development CIS-related academic-program outcomes, learning objectives and curricula. Our findings can also be used to facilitate competency-based learning in the CIS profession.

Persuasive Educational Technology (PET) is an effective tool for engaging students and promoting learning, using various persuasive strategies. Research has shown that personalizing PET could increase their effectiveness at engaging students and promoting learning. Cognitive ability has been identified as an important factor that could lead to individual differences in learning. Yet, there is a gap in knowledge on how learners' ability on various cognitive dimensions identified by Bloom's Taxonomy, is associated with their susceptibility to distinct persuasive strategies often used in PETs designs. To fill this gap, we conducted a large-scale study of 402 students to investigate how their cognitive ability scores relate to their susceptibility to persuasive strategies (Reward, Social Learning, and Trustworthiness) that are commonly used in PET design. We assessed the Cognitive ability scores using the test questions adapted from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Kit. Our results show that there is a relationship between individuals' cognitive abilities and their susceptibility to persuasive strategies. People with high ability to Remember and Evaluate concepts are more susceptible to the Reward Strategy, while those high in ability to Understand are positively associated with the Trustworthiness Strategy. Similarly, we uncovered that individuals high in the ability to Apply, Analyze, and Synthesize ideas are positively associated with the Social Learning Strategy. These findings can guide PET designers on how to develop PET tailored to learners belonging to different cognitive ability dimensions.

The amount of data generated from industrial processes has dramatically increased in recent times. As a result, data analytics skill has become an essential requirement for industrial engineering jobs. To meet this requirement, universities and colleges are beginning to integrate data analytics into industrial engineering curriculum. However, teaching and learning data analytics to industrial engineering students is by no means an easy task, since both programs have diverging focus. Industrial engineering focuses on process and systems optimization while data analytics focus on the application of information technology and mathematical models to visualize and extract useful information from raw data. To support teaching and learning of data analytics to industrial engineering students, this innovative practice full paper reports a pedagogical method that extrapolates product manufacturing processes to teaching and learning data analytics. We selected product manufacturing because it is a core course in the industrial engineering curriculum. The proposed pedagogical method is developed by first analyzing and comparing product manufacturing processes and data analytics techniques. Afterwards, we used the result of this analogy to develop a teaching and learning method for data analytics. For implementation and validation purposes, we adopt a project-based learning approach where students used our methodology to complete real-world data analytics projects. Data from students' grades shows that this approach improved their performance.

Requirements engineering (RE) provides a set of techniques and tools to, `EASV' (elicit, analyze, specify, and validate) the capabilities a product must have in order to meet user needs, solve definite user problems and deliver expected values to users. RE courses are usually designed to focus on software and computer hardware products, and are thus taught in software engineering (SE), information systems (IS) and computer science (CS). But RE tools and techniques are also intrinsically applicable and essential to other engineering disciplines, since those disciplines also develop and deploy products. For instance, products can be a motor control center (MCC) developed by electric engineers or aircraft engines developed by mechanical engineers. Successful development of any of these products requires techniques to precisely ESAV user needs and capabilities required to satisfy those needs. Therefore RE should be an essential component of engineering curriculum. This panel aims to bring together faculty and practitioners from engineering and computer science disciplines to identify and discuss challenges, benefits, and strategies for integrating RE course into engineering curriculum.

Project based learning (PBL) is gaining increasing traction among educational development, scholars and practitioners. The dominant argument suggests that by engaging in real world projects and research, students can acquire valuable critical thinking, team work, problem-solving, and improved communication skills. The aim of this work-in-progress paper is to investigate the effects of PBL on student performance in a requirements engineering (RE) course. Students were divided into 5 project groups; each group carried out a RE project that addresses a real-world problem. The project deliverable for each group is a complete software requirements specification (SRS) document; a user interface design; and software development project management plan. Following the completion of the project, structured feedback was elicited from the students via questionnaires. The results were combined with the final student grades to evaluate the effect of PBL on their combined performance. Preliminary results show that PBL can benefit RE courses, especially by enhancing students performance. Yet, certain challenges, e.g., stakeholders engagement and team cohesion, must be addressed before these benefits can be fully realized.

Extract, transform, load (ETL) is an essential technique for integrating data from multiple sources into a data warehouse.ETL is applicable to data warehousing, big data, and business intelligence.Through a systematic literature review of 97 papers, this research identifies and evaluates the current approaches used to implement existing ETL solutions.We found that conceptual modeling such as UML, BPMN, and MDA is the most popular approach used to implement ETL solutions.However, innovative approaches such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics are either under-utilized or not used at all to develop ETL solutions.Additionally, we discuss the implications of these to ETL research and practice.

This paper focuses presents a study of eight years of cross-course project-based learning (CC-PjBL) in an upper-level requirements and project management (RPM) course. Project-based learning (PjBL) is a method of instruction in which students learn by investigating and solving real-world problems in and open-ended, time-limited context1. Our instantiations of CC-PjBL matched paired students in an introductory software Requirements and Project Management (RPM) with students in different technology-oriented software development course(s) to utilize the requirements deliverables created by their RPM-course colleagues. The paper includes a review of relevant related PjBL literature, descriptions of our initiative and experience in applying CC-PjBL to RPM topics over eight years, and the lessons learned thereof. This paper reports summary experiences from student evaluations of these courses to evaluate the CC-PjBL experiences. The discussion also includes problems encountered with CC-PjBL assessment, faculty participation, and course hand-off, which may be useful to instructors that are considering to apply CC-PjBL as a method of instruction and to those that are currently practicing PjBL.

One of the biggest challenges of organizations in contemporary times is the ability to manage rapid changes in business environment. Software and expert information systems can help to manage changes and thus contribute to addressing this challenge. The initial, and perhaps, most important activities in software and expert systems development are to elicit, analyze, specify, and validate requirements. The methods, processes, tools, and techniques for performing these activities is called ‘Requirements Engineering’ (RE). The aim of this panel is to bring together RE academics, practitioners, and researchers to discuss innovative ways of educating and training RE professionals that would develop software and information systems to address rapid changes in business environment. Additionally, this panel intends to identify and examine various challenges of RE education in our changing world, and proffer possible strategies to address them. We hope that the discussions from this panel will inform RE and REE practice.

Flipped classroom is an emerging pedagogical model with potentials to support active engagement and improve student performance. This research empirically validate the impact of: 1) Flipped classroom on student performance; and 2) Preferred learning style on student performance in a flipped classroom. We designed an experiment to compare the performance of students in flipped classroom with traditional teaching method. This experiment involves a total of 35 students. The students were divided into two separate classes (01 and 1E) taught by the same professor with the same contents and assessment methods. Students in Class 01 are the `experiment group' and were taught with flipped method, while students in Class 1E are the `control group' and were taught with traditional method. Data was collected from three components of student assessment (Participation, Homework, and Exam) and questionnaire; we used the questionnaire to group students by their preferred learning styles. The key findings after data analysis include a) Students in flipped classroom achieved 7% higher `Participation Grade' than their peers in traditional. b) Students in traditional classroom achieved 17% higher `Homework Grade' and 6% higher `Exam Grade' than their peers in flipped classroom. c) Logical Learners outperformed Visual Learners by 10% in flipped classroom. Further, we discussed the implications of these findings to practice. We expect this paper to be useful and informative to higher education instructors who adopt or plan to adopt flipped classroom in their courses.

Unfamiliar accent and lack of fluency in English language have been identified as key challenges for international faculty in USA universities and colleges, particularly non-native English speakers and writers. These can have negative effects such as loss of interest in a given course, and possibly lead to poor performance. Currently, there are little or no evidence that most USA universities have effective strategies to support international faculty who write and speak English as a second language. Even learning management systems (LMS) provide little or no functionality to support non-native English speakers. This paper presents a summary of scholarly discussion on how language issues such as lack of fluency and unfamiliar accent can affect teaching and learning, and various strategies that universities can adopt to support international faculty working in the USA. This discussion took place in one of the catalyzing collaborative conversations (C3) sessions at Frontiers in Education Conference 2016.

Enterprise agility, generally defined as the ability of an enterprise to detect and respond to changes timely and effectively, is a core imperative for effective change management and optimal performance in contemporary enterprises. It can improve operational efficiency, and enhance competitive ability. At the same time, it is elusive, challenging, and difficult to achieve. A data centric approach can support change management process by providing an avenue to capture, store, and manage information, activities, and knowledge relating to changes. In addition, it can provide an avenue for re-using previous (successful) change management strategies to adapt to similar changes in the future. In this paper, we examine change management concepts and requirements, integrate them into a conceptual data model. To demonstrate utility of this data model, we apply it to real world industry case study. Results show that this approach can be useful to enterprise change management by providing information and intelligence to support change management decisions.