In the past two decades, there has been a consider-able increase in use of computer-based exams. Currently there is a lack of comprehensive understanding about equivalence between paper-based and computer-based exams in engineering and computing education. This study utilised a systematic literature review (using PRISMA) to synthesise the literature regarding paper and computer-based testing in engineering and computing education between 2010-2020 (inclusive). The research database that was used was Scopus. Publications were first screened by title, abstract and keywords. This was followed by screening the full text of each publication. Twenty-four papers were included in the final analysis. Outcomes demonstrated no clear result regarding equivalency between computer-based and paper-based exams. Similarly, many studies reported that students preferred computer-based exams, but this was not ubiquitous. Educators should consider these factors when considering transitioning from paper to computer-based testing.

Column-oriented stores, known for their scalability and flexibility, are a common NoSQL database implementation and are increasingly used in big data management. In column-oriented stores, a “full-scan” query strategy is inefficient and the search space can be reduced if data is well partitioned or indexed; however, there is no pre-defined schema for building and maintaining partitions and indexes at lower cost. We leverage an accumulative and high-dimensional data model, a sophisticated linearization algorithm, and an efficient query algorithm, to solve the challenge of how a pre-defined and well-partitioned data model can be applied to flexible and time-varied key-value data. We adapt a high-dimensional array as the data model to partition the key-value data without additional storage and massive calculation; improve the Z-order linearization algorithm, which map multidimensional data to one dimension while preserving locality of the data points, for flexibility; efficiently build an expansion mechanism for the data model to support time-varied data. The result is Haery, a column-oriented store, based on a distributed file system and computing framework. In experiments, Haery is compared with Hive, HBase, Cassandra, MongoDB, PostgresXL, and HyperDex in terms of query performance. With results indicating Haery on average performs 4.57x, 4.23x, 3.55x, 1.79x, 1.82x, and 120.6x faster, respectively.

One of the challenges of global software engineering courses is to bring the practices and experience of large geographically distributed teams into the local and time-limited environment of a classroom. Over the last 6 years, an on-campus studio course for software engineering has been developed at the University of Queensland (UQ) that places small teams of students on different features of a common product. This creates two layers of collaboration, as students work within their teams on individual features, and the teams must interoperate with many other teams on the common product. The class uses continuous integration practices and predominantly asynchronous communication channels (Slack and GitHub) to facilitate this collaboration. The original goal of this design was to ensure that students would authentically experience issues associated with realistically sized software projects, and learn to apply appropriate software engineering and collaboration practices to overcome them, in a course without significant extra staffing. Data from the development logs showed that most commits take place outside synchronous class hours, and the project operates as a temporally distributed team even though the students are geographically co-located. Since 2015, a course adapted from this format has also been taught at the University of New England (UNE), an Australian regional university that is also a longstanding provider of distance education. In this course, most students study online, and the class has to be able to work globally, because as well as students taking part from around Australia, there are also typically a small number of students taking part from overseas. Transferring the course to a smaller but predominantly online institution has allowed us to evaluate the distributed nature of the course, by considering what aspects of the course needed to change to support students who are geographically distributed, and comparing how the two cohorts behave. This has produced an overall course design, to teach professional distributed software engineering practices, that is adaptable from large classes to small, and from local to global.

Automated marking of student programming assignments has long been a goal of IT educators. Much of this work has focused on the correctness of small student programs, and only limited attention has been given to systematic assessment of the effectiveness of student testing. In this work, we introduce SAM (the Seeded Auto Marker), a system for automated assessment of student submissions which assesses both program code and unit tests supplied by the students. Our central contribution is the use of programs seeded with specific bugs to analyse the effectiveness of the students' unit tests. Beginning with our intended solution program, and guided by our own set of unit tests, we create a suite of minor variations to the solution, each seeded with a single error. Ideally, a student's unit tests should not only identify the presence of the bug, but should do so via the failure of as small a number of tests as possible, indicating focused test cases with minimal redundancy. We describe our system, the creation of seeded test programs and report our experiences in using the approach in practice. In particular, we find that students often fail to provide appropriate coverage, and that their tests frequently suffer from their poor understanding of the limitations imposed by the abstraction.

It has been argued for many years that software engineering lacks the repeatability and well-defined monitoring characteristic of the traditional engineering disciplines. Over time, numerous authors have addressed this issue by proposing a range of software metrics although it is generally agreed that no one measure is sufficient to capture software quality, and a well chosen suite of metrics must be employed. While substantial progress has been made, adoption of metrics has been limited in the software development community, and metrics have long suffered from a lack of comprehensibility. Further, critics have argued that many metrics have been introduced in isolation, with little regard for their relationship to existing measures, and without appropriate validation against a sufficient body of source code. This work introduces the Java Metrics Reporter, a new tool which addresses a number of these concerns in the domain of object oriented languages. The tool provides integrated tutorial support and benchmarking of user code against professional code bases. Moreover, the architecture allows for adaptation to other languages, and extension to other metrics through a straightforward plug-in approach. The paper provides detailed consideration of the architecture and the metrics selected, together with aspects of the tool which lend to its usability and assist in interpretation of metrics. Finally, the paper outlines plans for the further development of the tool, together with its release to the professional and research communities.

The industry-wide demand for rapid development in concert with greater process maturity has seen many software development firms adopt tightly structured iterative processes. While a number of commercial vendors offer suitable process infrastructure and tool support, the cost of licensing, configuration and staff training may be prohibitive for the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) which dominate the Asia-Pacific software industry. This work addresses these problems through the introduction of the Real World Software Process (RWSP), a freely available, Web-based iterative scheme designed specifically for small teams and organisations. RWSP provides a detailed process description, high quality document templates - including code review and inspection guidelines - and the integrated tutorial support necessary for successful usage by inexperienced developers and teams. In particular it is intended that the process be readily usable by software houses which at present do not follow a formal process, and that the free RWSP process infrastructure should be a vehicle for improving industry standards.