The world faces escalating crises: record-breaking temperatures, widespread fires, severe flooding, increased oceanic microplastics, and unequal resource distribution. Academia introduces courses around sustainability to meet the new demand, but software engineering education lags behind. While software systems contribute to environmental issues through high energy consumption, they also hold the potential for solutions, such as more efficient and equitable resource management. Yet, sustainability remains a low priority for many businesses, including those in the digital sector. Business as usual is no longer viable. A transformational change in software engineering education is urgently needed. We must move beyond traditional curriculum models and fully integrate sustainability into every aspect of software development. By embedding sustainability as a core competency, we can equip future engineers not only to minimise harm but also to innovate solutions that drive positive, sustainable change. Only with such a shift can software engineering education meet the demands of a world in crisis and prepare students to lead the next generation of sustainable technology. This article discusses a set of challenges and proposes a customisable education roadmap for integrating sustainability into the software engineering curricula. These challenges reflect our perspective on key considerations, stemming from regular, intensive discussions in regular workshops among the authors and the community, as well as our extensive research and teaching experience in the field.

Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands a shift by industry, governments, society, and individuals to reach adequate levels of awareness and actions to address sustainability challenges. Software systems will play an important role in moving towards these targets. Sustainability skills are necessary to support the development of software systems and to provide sustainable IT-supported services for citizens. While there is a growing number of academic bodies including sustainability education in engineering and computer science curricula, there is not yet comprehensive research on the competencies and skills required by IT professionals to develop such systems. This study aims to identify the industrial sustainability needs for education and training from software engineers’ perspective. For this, we answer the following questions: (1) what are the interests of organisations with an IT division with respect to sustainability? (2) what do organisations want to achieve with respect to sustainability, and how? and (3) what are the sustainability-related competencies and skills that organisations need to achieve their sustainability goals? We conducted a qualitative study with interviews and focus groups with experts from twenty-eight organisations with an IT division from nine countries to understand their interests, goals, and achievements related to sustainability, and the skills and competencies needed to achieve their goals. Our findings show that organisations are interested in sustainability, both idealistically and increasingly for core business reasons. They seek to improve the sustainability of software processes and products but encounter difficulties, like the trade-off between short-term financial profitability and long-term sustainability goals or an unclear understanding of sustainability concepts from a software engineering perspective. To fill these gaps, they have promoted in-house training courses, collaborated with universities, and sent employees to external training. The acquired competencies should support translating environmental and social benefits into economic ones and make sustainability an integral part of software development.

To foster a sustainable society within a sustainable environment, we must dramatically reshape our work and consumption activities, most of which are facilitated through software. Yet, most software engineers hardly consider the effects on the sustainability of the IT products and services they deliver. This issue is exacerbated by a lack of methods and tools for this purpose. Despite the practical need for methods and tools that explicitly support consideration of the effects that IT products and services have on the sustainability of their intended environments, such methods and tools remain largely unavailable. Thus, urgent research is needed to understand how to design such tools for the IT community properly. In this article, we describe our experience using design science to create the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF), which supports software engineers in anticipating and mitigating the potential sustainability effects during system development. More specifically, we identify and present the challenges faced during this process. The challenges that we have faced and addressed in the development of the SusAF are likely to be relevant to others who aim to create methods and tools to integrate sustainability analysis into their IT products and services development. Thus, the lessons learned in SusAF development are shared for the benefit of researchers and other professionals who design tools for that end.

Phishing attacks are among the most prevalent attack mechanisms employed by attackers. The consequences of successful phishing include (and are not limited to) financial losses, impact on reputation, and identity theft. The paper presents a systematic literature review featuring 248 articles (from the beginning of 2018 until March 2023) across the main digital libraries to identify, (1) the existing mitigation strategies against phishing attacks, and the underlying technologies considered in the development of these strategies; (2) the most considered phishing vectors in the development of the mitigation strategies; (3) anti-phishing guidelines and recommendations for organizations and end-users respectively; and (4) gaps and open issues that exist in the state of the art. The paper advocates for the need to consider the abilities of human users during the design and development of the mitigation strategies as only technology-centric solutions will not suffice to cater to the challenges posed by phishing attacks.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations focus on key issues for the transformation of our world towards sustainability. We argue for stronger integration of the SDGs into requirements and software engineering and for the creation of methods and tools that support the analysis of potential effects of software systems on sustainability in general and on SDGs in particular. To demonstrate one way of undertaking this integration, we report on how the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF -- a tool developed by the authors of this paper) can be mapped to the SDGs, allowing the identification of potential effects of software systems on sustainability and on the SDGs. This mapping exercise demonstrates that it is possible for requirements engineers working on a specific system to consider that system's impact with respect to SDGs.

In this literature review, we investigate machine learning techniques that are applied for stock market prediction. A focus area in this literature review is the stock markets investigated in the literature as well as the types of variables used as input in the machine learning techniques used for predicting these markets. We examined 138 journal articles published between 2000 and 2019. The main contributions of this review are: (1) an extensive examination of the data, in particular, the markets and stock indices covered in the predictions, as well as the 2173 unique variables used for stock market predictions, including technical indicators, macro-economic variables, and fundamental indicators, and (2) an in-depth review of the machine learning techniques and their variants deployed for the predictions. In addition, we provide a bibliometric analysis of these journal articles, highlighting the most influential works and articles.

Sustained participation is critical to the success of digital citizen-science initiatives, yet much of the current literature focuses on mapping people’s motives to engage without considering the extent to which participation is sustained over time. We conducted a year-long experimental study (n=85) “in-thewild” to explore the effects of human-value orientations on the use of digital citizen-science tools. Participants took part in both the co-design and use of digital citizen-science tools in Lappeenranta, Finland from 2018–2019. Our statistical analysis finds evidence of relations between value orientations, sustained participation, and the number and quality of digital interactions. Specifically, we find that value orientations are linked with different usage patterns. For instance, people with a stronger openness-to-change (OTC) values tended to use the mobile application to check others’ submissions, even when they had nothing to submit, whereas people with stronger security values mostly used the application when they had something relevant to submit. Further understanding the influence of human values in digital citizen science is a promising area for future research that could contribute to a) guide the design of incentive mechanisms, b) understand user experiences in online communities, and c) inform the design and evaluation of digital citizen-science technologies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative framework for handling the security and usability conflicts during the system development lifecycle. The framework has been formulated while considering key concerns raised after conducting a series of interviews with practitioners from the industry. The framework is aimed at assisting system designers and developers in making reasonably accurate choices when it comes to the trade-offs between security and usability. The outcomes of using the framework are documented as design patterns, which are disseminated among the community of system designers and developers for use in other but similar contexts. Design/methodology/approach A design science research approach was used to develop the integrative framework for usable security. Interviews were conducted for identification of the key concerns; however, the framework was validated during a workshop. Moreover, to validate the patterns’ template and the usable security pattern identified after instantiating the framework, a survey instrument was used. Findings It is important to consider the usability aspect in the development of security systems; otherwise, the systems, despite being secure against attacks, would be susceptible to user mistakes leading to compromises. It is worthwhile to handle usable security concerns right from the start of system development life cycle. Design patterns can help the developers in assessing the usability of their security options. Practical implications Practical implications The framework would assist the designers and developers in handling the security and usability conflicts right from the start of the system development life cycle. The patterns documented after using the framework would help not only the designers and developers working in the industry but also freelancers. Originality/value The authors present a novel framework to handle the security and usability conflicts during the system development life cycle. The development process of the framework was driven by the concerns raised after a series of interviews with the practitioners from industry. The framework presented in this paper was validated during a workshop in which it was exposed for review and comments by the participants from the industry. To demonstrate the use of patterns in general and the framework in particular, a case study featuring smart grids from the domain of cyber-physical systems is presented, which (to the best of the authors’ knowledge) features the first work relevant to usable security in the domain of cyber-physical systems.

Research suggests that employers value various soft skills highly when recruiting software engineering (SE) graduates in the software industry; however, SE graduate students tend to lack those soft skills. This study examines the effects of a capstone course with a problem/project-based approach in the acquisition of soft skills. In this capstone, the graduate students worked closely on a real-world project with the customers from Finnish public and private organizations. Moreover, the study maps out the identified soft skills from the capstone course to the desired requirements of soft skills in various roles in the software industry. Thematic data analysis of reflections given by 48 students identified fifteen soft skill categories that are mainly acknowledged by the students after the completion of the course. In particular, we have shown that the majority of identified soft skills in this course correspond to the desirable soft skills in the software industry. To conclude, the approach taken in this course is a powerful means to improve the soft skills of the graduate students to meet the needs of employers, and thus increase their employment prospects.

Integrating novel software systems in our society, economy, and environment can have far-reaching effects. As a result, software systems should be designed in such a way as to maintain or improve the sustainability of the socio-technical system of their destination. However, a paradigm shift is required to raise awareness of software professionals on the potential sustainability effects of software systems. While Requirements Engineering is considered the key to driving this change, requirements engineers lack the knowledge, experience and methodological support for doing so. This paper presents a question-based framework for raising awareness of the potential effects of software systems on sustainability, as the first step towards enabling the required paradigm shift. A feasibility study of the framework was carried out with two groups of computer science students. The results of the study indicate that the framework helps enable discussions about potential effects that software systems could have on sustainability.

Participatory sensing (PS) and citizen science hold promises for a genuinely interactive and inclusive citizen engagement in meaningful and sustained collection of data about social and environmental phenomena. Yet the underlying motivations for public engagement in PS remain still unclear particularly regarding the role of gamification, for which HCI research findings are often inconclusive. This paper reports the findings of an experimental study specifically designed to further understand the effects of gamification on citizen engagement. Our study involved the development and implementation of two versions (gamified and non-gamified) of a mobile application designed to capture lake ice coverage data in the sub-arctic region. Emerging findings indicate a statistically significant effect of gamification on participants' engagement levels in PS. The motivation, approach and results of our study are outlined and implications of the findings for future PS design are reflected.

Software engineering (SE) educators are challenged to balance the scope and depth in their courses to train students in skills which will fulfill the ever-evolving industry needs. Capstone courses are a tool for educators to transfer hands-on experience into practical knowledge and skills of SE students. This paper describes the design of a Casptone course, at Lappeenranta University of Technology. The designed course is "human-centric SE capstone", infusing design thinking methods and agile practices into the project life-cycle knowhow. The capstone was offered in spring of 2017 as a 16-week course for 29 students. Design thinking was effective to perform requirement elicitation, software design and testing. Also, the applied approach allowed students to be self-directed which increased their motivation, as a result there was zero dropout rate. Design thinking is a powerful mean of problem solving and effectively supports SE education in bringing a more hands-on and minds-on, problem-based curriculum.

Context: Sustainability and sustainable development are emerging trends all around the world. The need for changes is evident and immediate. Problem: In order to address all the technical and social sustainability challenges people need to be educated. So far computer science and software engineering education has not fully answered to this need. Contribution: This paper presents one sustainability-focused ICT programme and analyses its evolution in order to find out the lessons learned after three cohorts of graduated students. This analysis is based on an evaluation model built based on literature. Results: The outcome of the analysis shows that understanding of the sustainability and thus the ways to increase the impact increases year by year. Although the evolution is quite evident and follows the general research trends the better impact and better readiness can be achieved through increased understanding.

In this paper, an approach and a rubric for measuring commitment to computer-supported collaboration in student teams is presented.

This paper presents the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Pervasive Computing and Communications for Sustainable Development (PERCCOM). This program brings together 11 academic partners and 8 industry partners to combine advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with environmental awareness to enable world-class education and unique competences for ICT professionals who can build cleaner, greener, more resource and energy efficient cyber-physical systems. First, this paper describes the rationale and motivations for ICT education for sustainability challenges. It then details the structure and contents of the programs including the courses offered at the three teaching locations (Nancy France, Lappeenranta Finland, and Lulea Sweden). The ways that the program has been running as well as students selection, their thesis works, involvement of industry, are also discussed. The program was built and managed using a solid academic standards and strategies student-centered learning.

This paper investigates the integration of social media technologies and living lab concepts of open and user experiences-driven innovation, in order to align software engineering and innovation. The proposed social media-based living lab approach is aimed at fostering design thinking within a human experience-centric engineering and innovation approach. Living lab provides openness of collaboration among software engineers, stakeholders and potential end-users as well as the engagement of users as developers. We also show how living lab has been used to engage users and stakeholders in fundamental research and empirical software engineering including: (1) strengthening user and customer involvement in the overall software engineering lifecycle, and (2) combining social media and living into an integrative software engineering environment in which end-users and consumers are designers, developers and further more innovators.

The number of mobile phones has grown greatly during the last few decades. Among this trend, also the expectations and requirements we pose on the mobile devices is growing. As the hardware restrictions for efficient computing are slowly removed, the problem of battery life still exists. Current solutions for extending battery life take into consideration very strict energy saving methods as well as building larger batteries. This paper takes a look into saving battery life via remote execution method known as cyber foraging. In cyber foraging the mobile device can use nearby free computing resources to perform more complex tasks instead of executing them locally. A series of tests were carried out in order to evaluate the possibility of saving energy via remote execution. Not only this seems efficient for saving battery life, but also reducing computation times and improving the user experience.

This article describes problems of distributing a real-time, human-in-the-loop simulator. The simulator itself is a dynamics simulator solving the dynamics of Multi-Body Systems in real-time. Techniques used to distribute computation are presented and their suitability for general purpose interactive simulation are discussed.

In this paper we present a study where a Wiki platform has been used as a repository for public learning diaries, exercises and for creating a Wiki book about course-related information. The idea is to have a simple environment that could improve peer learning, collaboration and information sharing among the participants. Students could take advantage of the produced and collected information in their learning portfolios and lecturers might use some parts of the information to develop their teaching. The results show that Wiki platform is applicable to even less experienced students, but it requires guidance and effort to motivate the students to provide own content.

The role of portfolios has lately become more important in universities as a part of learning and professional growth. We believe that successful adoption of e-portfolios require two fundamental issues. Firstly, valuable information is created during the courses. Importing this information to the portfolio from various sources and describing it with metadata should also be made as simple as possible to ease the maintenance and motivating the students. Secondly, portfolio has to be well-organized. Organizing may be completed in various ways and for varying needs, but a good starting point during the creation is to follow studentspsila personal study plans and defined structure. Visible structure gives also better chances for successful representation or re-organizing of existing portfolio. In addition to this, bringing course pre-requisites and tacit information as a part of portfolios can deepen the presentation of provided information and description of personal knowledge.

In this paper we present a study where a peer reviewing system targeted for conference paper evaluation has been used for enhancing the learning of programming though peer review. For peer reviewing purposes two open source systems were evaluated and MyReview was selected for evaluation. The peer review system was used in one programming focused course and the benefits of peer reviewing were analyzed from the reviewer and reviewee point of view. The results show that a peer review system targeted for conference paper evaluations is applicable for reviewing programs although the system should be much simpler. Students appreciated the documented comments from other students but were more interested in lecturer or other expert opinion.

The current computing and communication services are driven by various technologies. The creation of such services is however not an easy task. The different platforms lack openness that simplifies interoperability. Service development is still mainly technical oriented, where service creation tools are meant for serving and assisting the professional developers. Service creation is not seen as a task for end users right now. In this paper we will discuss how end users could be enabled to create new services, shown on the example within a mobile context-aware service platform. This is achieved by introducing the concept of the technology agnostic approach into the process. We present the conceptual architecture and explain the idea of end-user driven service creation that can provide a solution. Several tools were designed and implemented to prove that the concepts work. With the help of semantic service description, the end users can express their service wishes and create services using a graphical interface technology agnostically. The idea was implemented in two European projects and we have identified the next steps to improve the prototypes as well as the idea. Based on several tools and an underlying platform the ideas have been tested in a development environment for mobile context-aware services. Here end-users are able to design their own services or combine existing services, which can be shared and used by other users later on.

As IEEE introduced the 802.11 WLAN standard in 1997 the wireless scene began to grow rapidly. Internet service providers (ISP) opened the game by building wireless access networks for their customers. Access to the ISP networks is usually limited only to ISP customers: On the other hand, the ISP networks are easy to administer. The next trend in wireless is public community networks built by individuals. The community networks are open for everyone, but the main problem is the lack of centralized management. However, an open and centrally managed wireless network can be built by using a specialized solution taking care of the network management. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce the "Lappeenranta model" allowing next generation centrally managed wireless multi-ISP networks, which are open to the public. As the solution offers new opportunities to all the participants connected to the network, the paper also evaluates the influences to each of them.

Although WLAN-technology is becoming more and more popular, the real consumer mass markets have not yet adopted it. This is not only because of the lack of terminal devices, but also because of the disconnectedness and immaturity concerning network access technologies and business models. The needs and requirements of the mass-market consumers must also be clearly understood. This paper considers the wireless data transfer market. We present a proposal for dividing the adopters of WLAN-technology into different groups that have different characteristics. We also study the benefits, challenges and financial possibilities of a new kind of regional WLAN-access provider. The new model aims to reduce some of the presented barriers that separate WLAN from mass markets. The regional access provider model presented provides the user free local services and an opportunity to choose one's ISP.

With rapid increase of popularity of wireless LANs a necessity of forcing usage rules arises. This paper describes how to force users to follow usage rules in public wireless LANs. Problems discussed in the work are methods of revealing rogue DHCP servers and users using their own IP addresses, which are not issued by official DHCP server. Every method considers also stopping such users front violating the usage rules. The proposed solutions are custom made for the test network, but general ideas are applicable in any wireless or wired environment.