This innovative practice work in progress paper discusses the integration of Model-Eliciting Activities (MEA) into in software engineering (SE) classes, and the challenges faced in preparing and delivering these activities. The preparation and implementation of MEA in SE classes can be challenging, as it requires creating self-assessable MEA questions that simulate real-world problems, ensuring the integration of MEA in SE course topics, providing feedback, and analyzing learning outcomes. In this research, the authors address these challenges and gain practical experience in designing and implementing MEA in SE classes. The authors conducted experiments over two consecutive semesters in SE courses that cover topics such as requirement solicitation, design and implementation, software testing techniques, secure software, and software quality assurance. They incorporated MEA questions that simulate real-world problems into both face-to-face and online classes, ensuring the integration of MEA in SE course topics, providing feedback, and analyzing the learning gains. This paper contributes to the distribution of MEA application for SE courses. It presents the authors' experiences, challenges, reports evaluations, and findings in implementing MEA in SE courses. Overall, this paper provides insights into the effective integration of MEA into SE courses, and the benefits it can bring to students' learning outcomes.

The issues related to SolarWinds attacks point out a large concern with modern software development projects in that there are fundamental flaws with existing security infrastructure. The purpose of this research is to investigate to what extent can the SootDiff analysis tool, a bytecode comparison tool, be used to determine if an application has been tampered with by comparing a known good version with a version that is unknown. The compiled and decompiled bytecodes as Jimple representations were compared to analyze the unique differences in identifying code tempering. The results showed that the scope of the variable is important in whether the change was detected. Variables with a scope that was entirely contained within one method could have their names changed without triggering a warning, but global variables to objects could not. The parameter variable and the local variable behave differently. Since the parameter is in the publicly available part of the method Java treats it the same way as it does the global variable. The local variable is strictly private to the method and not made available to the outside. Such findings can support the analysis tool which is useful for identifying potential breaches to detect meaningful changes in code even if it is decompiled.

Security is a critical aspect in the process of designing, developing, and testing software systems. Due to the increasing need for security-related skills within software systems, there is a growing demand for these skills to be taught in computer science. A series of security modules was developed not only to meet the demand but also to assess the impact of these modules on teaching critical cyber security topics in computer science courses. This full paper in the innovative practice category presents the outcomes of six security modules in a freshman-level course at two institutions. The study adopts a Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA) as a project for students to demonstrate an understanding of the security concepts. Two experimental studies were conducted: 1) Teaching effectiveness of implementing cyber security modules and MEA project, 2) Students’ experiences in conceptual modeling tasks in problem-solving. In measuring the effectiveness of teaching security concepts with the MEA project, students’ performance, attitudes, and interests as well as the instructor’s effectiveness were assessed. For the conceptual modeling tasks in problem-solving, the results of student outcomes were analyzed. After implementing the security modules with the MEA project, students showed a great understanding of cyber security concepts and an increased interest in broader computer science concepts. The instructor’s beliefs about teaching, learning, and assessment shifted from teacher-centered to student-centered during their experience with the security modules and MEA project. Although 64.29% of students’ solutions do not seem suitable for real-world implementation, 76.9% of the developed solutions showed a sufficient degree of creativity.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate whether having accessible cybersecurity programs (CPs) for high-school students affected girls’ long-term engagement with the industry, given that they already had interests in technology. Although much research has been done to evaluate how high-school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs retain girls in computing fields, it is necessary to see if this same long-term engagement exists in cybersecurity-specific programs. Design/methodology/approach In total, 55 members were surveyed from the aspirations in computing community regarding their experience in and accessibility to high-school CPs. A quantitative analysis of such responses was then undertaken using inferential statistical tools and chi-squared tests for independence. Findings The results showed that the existence of CPs alone are not influential factors in increasing long-term engagement with the field, showcasing that the high-knowledge barrier of CPs affects many students (even those with prior interests in technology). Instead, by having multiple occurrences of these programs and providing more cybersecurity resources to areas that lacked them, girls were more likely to report an increased interest in the field. Practical implications Such information can support future program leaders to develop effective, accessible and more targeted cybersecurity initiatives for students of various communities. Originality/value By analyzing the unique interactions of tech-aspiring women with cybersecurity, this exploration was able to demonstrate that women of different computing experiences face a shared barrier when entering the cybersecurity field. Likewise, in comparing these perspectives across different age groups, the investigation highlighted the development and subsequent growth of cybersecurity programming over the years and why such initiatives should be supported into the future.

This work in progress paper in the innovative practice category presents an innovative approach where cybersecurity concepts and methods are taught as individual modules across several existing courses in the curriculum of computer science (CS), computer information systems (CIS) and information technology (IT) courses. In almost all universities, cyber security is currently taught as an “add-on” track or concentration where students take a series of three to five courses related to cyber security in their junior and senior years after they have completed a series of required core courses [4]. Cyber security is so important that it can no longer be just a topic or a track - it is the way in which ALL software should be written. It should be taught in almost every course in a computer science curriculum because cyber security affects every major software component in any computing system. The modules are designed to be independent and loosely coupled, which enables them to be integrated into courses offering similar course content within the program, other computing related programs, or courses offered by other colleges and universities. The modules introduce students to the various concepts of cyber security from the freshman year, to ensure that fundamental programming concepts are taught from a security perspective - building a strong cyber security foundation for future courses. This innovative approach of teaching cyber security across various computing curricula will widen the pipeline to meet the demand of the nation for cyber security educated professionals.

Security affects every software component in different types of computing systems. Many vulnerabilities and attacks on software systems are due to security weaknesses in the software itself. During the process of software specification, development, or testing, security issues are either taken into consideration insufficiently or not at all. Such software, due to internal weaknesses is prone to new attacks. By teaching secure software engineering techniques for designing and developing software modules, students would learn systematic secure software development techniques, such as defect detecting and security testing. This paper presents a series of modules that are designed to be integrated into undergraduate software engineering courses from a security perspective. The goal of the modules is to teach the building of robust software security requirements, secure software design and development, and secure software verification through a secure software development lifecycle.

Various visualization techniques have been adopted to educational Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) environments. Some provide software development with visual notations without source code, while others support programming with visual aids. Our research supports Java programming along with static UML class diagrams and dynamic execution trace of program synchronized in a webbased programming environment - JaguarCode. It aims to help students better understand static structure and dynamic behavior of Java programs, and object-oriented design concepts. This paper reports on an initial evaluation of JaguarCode to investigate its effectiveness and user satisfaction through quantitative and qualitative experiments. The experimental results revealed that having both static and dynamic visualizations did positively impact the correctness of program understanding and tracing problems, and the visual representations did affect students' understanding on program execution of the problems to higher accuracy. It was also observed that students were satisfied with the aspects of those visualizations provided in JaguarCode.

This paper presents how to generate an optimized sequence diagram from static java source code and dynamic execution trace at a web-based educational programming environment. The aim of this research is to help student programmers better understand the dynamic behavior of a java program using optimized sequence diagram, therefore to enhance object-oriented programming learning experience.

In computer science education, the programming environment is just as crucial as the classroom environment. Students must be provided with adequate tools for developing an understanding of computer science paradigms. These paradigms include object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts, such as inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation. JavelinaCode is a web-based integrated development environment (IDE) for Java programming that provides students with both a static and dynamic visualization of code; the static structure of code at compile time and the dynamic execution of code at run time. The objective of this research is to present the differences between JavelinaCode and similar programming environment tools to demonstrate how JavelinaCode improves students' understanding of OOP concepts. Comparative analysis is conducted between JavelinaCode and programming environment tools, including BlueJ, Jeliot 3, AguiaJ, JIVE, and jGRASP. Each of these tools is evaluated on the basis of time constraints for download and installation, complexity of the download process and tool's interface, and the provision of static and dynamic visualizations. The results of the comparative analysis show that JavelinaCode provides students with a more effective tool for understanding OOP concepts than those considered. This is due to a simplified set up process and user interface and a better integrated set of visualizations. The combination of these factors contributes to a programming environment that emphasizes developing and running code.

In large project, source code becomes increasing complex and lengthy so program comprehension plays an important and significant role for developers. Sequence diagram generated using static source code or dynamic only approach provides limited execution coverage, additionally contains redundant, dead and fault driven methods, which increase the size of the diagram and complexity. In this paper, to address the problems, optimized sequence diagrams were developed by combining static source code and dynamic only approach, also incorporating various levels of abstraction in order to reduce complexity and provide complete behavior of the system. Case studies determined from the sequence diagram for three systems generated based on source code only and fully dynamic approach proved that the proposed optimized sequence diagrams were less complex and provided more detailed description of the functionality of the system.

This paper presents an approach of static and dynamic visualizations synchronized along with source code in a web-based programming environment, JavelinaCode. Using JavelinaCode, student programmers can write Java programs directly in a frontend web browser without any software or plug-in installation. They are provided with a view of the static state of a Java program in UML class diagrams and the dynamic run-time state of the program by stepping forwards and backwards through program execution. A case study has revealed that our approach is useful, in particular, to trace and detect an object flow anomaly caused by method overriding and polymorphism. A preliminary comparison test result also has shown that through our web-based platform-independent environment, student programmers are freed from concern with continuous version changes and evolutions of the Java language, plug-ins, and operating systems.

While Object-Oriented programming in Java has been widely adopted as an introductory programming course in Computer Science, it is considered difficult to teach and learn. Studies have identified that the difficulty is from the underlying Object-Oriented concepts and principles. To help student programmers better understand the structure of a program and the concepts of Object-Oriented design, visualizations in various formats have been applied to programming environments. This paper presents a web-based interactive educational programming environment, JavlinaCode, and its unique design principles. JavlinaCode is designed for teaching object-oriented programming in Java. It aims to enhance student programmers' programming skill and to help them understand object-oriented design concepts. It provides integrated static and dynamic visualizations: the static state of a Java program in an UML class diagram and the dynamic run-time state of the program execution. With the synchronized multi-view real time visualization along with source code, JavelinaCode is highly expected to reduce student programmers' cognitive workload in Java programming and to enhance comprehension of the objectoriented programming and design concepts.