This paper describes and evaluates three approaches to actor model runtime implementations. The classic approach is to use one queue per actor. A thread-bound approach where the queue is shared through the actors designated to one thread, and virtual threads from the JDK 21, used for I/O operations, and treated here as actors in the third-developed runtime. Furthermore, minimalistic implementations are compared to the implemented ones in Actor4j. Intra-communication still wins when actors can be grouped on the same thread. Suppose coordination (inter-communication) between a vast number of actors is a necessity. In that case, a classic approach is the better approach, as it has more flexibility in handling these tasks, especially as it supports work-stealing.

Although critical thinking (CT) is one of the most important skills of the 21st-century, many higher education graduates lack this skill and many educators do not explicitly address it in their teaching. This study addresses the gap in teaching CT skills in software engineering by proposing an extension of the state-of-the-art T-CHAT educational approach that can be used for teaching engineering. This extension explicitly targets the development of CT in software engineering students and the ability to transfer it to other tasks and domains. This study presents teaching methods that are appropriate for teaching CT and embeds them into the T-CHAT learning/teaching process. An educational experiment was conducted in two modules in which this approach was implemented. The quasi-experimental research design with one-group pre-test–post-test was used. Quantitative data were collected in two student self-perception surveys at the beginning and the end of these modules. Nine paired responses were obtained from the students who took part in both surveys. This sample size was too small for any statistical conclusions to be drawn. Due to the small data sample (less than 10), single-subject research and its methods of data analysis were used: (1) chats were created to visually inspect the data, and (2) descriptive statistics were calculated for all scales of the CTSAS and SENCTDS questionnaires. The results of this study support the hypotheses that the proposed approach has a positive impact on the development of both students’ perceived CT skills and CT dispositions. Students perceived that their CT skills developed better that their CT dispositions. In addition, for most CT skills and dispositions, students’ responses were less dispersed in the post-survey than in the pre-survey, showing a reduction in the point estimate for standard deviation. This is a significant finding because it shows that the extended T-CHAT educational approach has led to more homogeneous perceptions of CT skills and dispositions across the student group. To summarize, the extended T-CHAT approach has been proven to promote the development of critical thinking, as demonstrated by the increase in students perceived critical thinking skills and dispositions.

Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI4.0) compliant Manufacturing Operation System (MES) implementations require high investments, which put them out of reach for small and medium-sized enterprises. This work presents a lightweight RAMI4.0-compliant MES. The underlying proposed architecture of the Cognitive Robotic System for Digitalized and Networked (Automated) Insect Farms (CoRoSect) project ensures communication and information interoperability within the shop and office floor. The repository pattern is used for sharing data by integrating secondary Asset Administration Shells (AASs) as an information hub. We propose further enhancements by implementing higher-level AASs for edge or public cloud use. The path taken for reaching this goal can be especially interesting for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) because of the simplified implementation and for other researchers by improving this procedure in a more complete solution. First, pilots show the practicality of the provided solution.

Nowadays, applications in the cloud are based on a microservice architecture. Depending on the problem to be solved, they tend to grow complex, and the maintenance is more complicated. For this, a scalable domain-specific (application-related) cluster architecture is conceptualized, which should fulfill the requirements of flexibility, scalability and elasticity, cost-effectiveness, and reliability. Each instance within the cluster covers an application domain. It is possible to upload service subdomains dynamically to an application domain at runtime. A subdomain consists of a group of actors (also called a pod). The development of a subdomain can be assigned to a team. A service subdomain can be scaled individually through replication or sharding (within the instance or the cluster). The proposed solution is expected to achieve a better result than a microservice or FaaS architecture. A single instance prototype was already developed, and a demo application was created.

The academia-industry gap in computer science persists since last two decades at least. Industry expects that computer science graduates possess not only profound technical knowledge and skills but also transferable skills such as communication and collaboration in team, problem-solving ability. Students need to learn those skills during their university studies to be competitive in the market after their graduation. This paper first examines the skill gap between graduates and industry expectations, and the existing didactic approaches in computer science education. The authors then present how the Java programming course has been taught using the task-centric holistic agile teaching approach T-CHAT to enhance both technical skills and transferable skills in students. The learning process is described with learning activities and assessments that are constructively aligned with the intended learning outcomes of the course. This is work in progress, so evaluation of the course is planned for future work.

In this paper, the actor-oriented Java framework Actor4j is used to implement administration shells in a RAMI4.0 context to enable the implementation of hybrid cloud solutions. A novel architecture is conceptualized around the usage of the Actor Model, especially in the area of edge and cloud computing. The administration shell can be either implemented by an asset that is OPC-UA ready or be mapped to a gateway in the device (service) cloud. The administration shell implemented with the Actor Model (predominantly for the public and private cloud) consists of four modules: the components module (describing the corresponding system), the publish-subscribe module, the additional logic module (conditions, alarms), and the interaction module (behavior). The main idea is to reuse an OPC-UA compliant implementation for the internal actor logic. At the device cloud level, IT/OT entities can be composed together in a domain specific point of view. This is implemented over three abstractions levels (data acquisition, data analytics and control & monitoring). The proposed Actor Model fits very well for the implementation of large scale administrations shells.

We assumed that high level of quality of life sense of IT leaders can lead to their better productivity and management of their IT teams. Therefore we investigate the correlations between leadership competencies, spirituality - sensitivity and quality of life of IT professionals in Poland, a transition economy. The research data is collected by an online survey with the use of our novel questionnaires among 420 IT professionals in the region of Lower Silesia of Poland. The results of this study indicate that leadership competencies correlate with spirituality and quality life of IT professionals in transition economies. The highest quality of life seems to be in companies where the managers manifest a high level of leadership competencies.

CPS engineers need to possess both technical and social skills to run CPS-engineering projects successfully. Especially social skills are crucial as the project fails are mostly caused because of lacking social skills of project members. Besides strong social skills, CPS engineers need to have a wide range of various technical skills as the products they deal with are getting increasingly complex integrating hardware, software and some kinds of communication mechanism with their environment. Students studying CPS engineering need to be well prepared for their future jobs. Therefore, they need to get an opportunity to face with realistic project situations. In this work we describe our experience gathered during the first run of a CPS engineering course based on a novel task-centric holistic agile teaching approach (T-CHAT).

This paper explores the socio-economic aspects of human capital, especially the IT users' innovation capability in regional cross-border small and medium-sized enterprises in Poland and in Germany. Socio-economic aspects of human capital are crucial for the socioeconomic development that may be achieved through virtual access to online learning tools and by diagnosing IT users' innovation capability and their business competencies, in relation to information and communication technologies. This paper presents an initial report on experimental research that was conducted online using the author's diagnostic tools. Conclusions and findings of this work contribute to socioeconomic development of cross-border regions in both countries. This research fulfills the gap in the sphere of connecting simultaneously three aspects - research, learning, and practice for socioeconomic development of both countries.

Context: Cyber physical systems are getting pervasive in our every-day life. For their development the industry needs highly-qualified and skilled employees. The employees need to have a wide breadth of knowledge in many engineering disciplines and possess excellent soft skills. Ideally, the needed skills are taught in practical settings. Problem: The versatility of the problems in development of cyber physical systems poses a challenge for the teaching. A common approach to teaching software engineering concepts is to have students form teams to create a software product; this allows them to experience the problems first hand. However, this approach, compared with "traditional" software engineering and software development, is much more difficult for cyber-physical systems, due to the need to have a wide understanding in multiple engineering fields. At the same time, the education of engineering concepts lack on teaching of soft skills that are often key success factors for engineering projects. Approach: We developed a novel task-centric holistic agile approach on teaching cyber physical systems. The concept is task-centric concluding five teaching approaches that may be used when needed. The concept focuses the teaching of technical skills and soft skills. Result: The proposed concept allows students to have an insight into the difficulties involved in development of cyberphysical systems from multiple points of view in a realistic way. Conclusion: The holistic agile approach on teaching cyber physical systems has the potential to reinforce conceptual instruction with hands-on learning at a fraction of the time and cost that would be required to run a true cyber-physical systems development project.

Offshoring is a widely used practice in the software development. It is mainly employed to reduce development costs. However, as in a number of studies have been shown, about 40 percent of offshore software development projects are flops. One predominant reason for it is the lack of standardized and practicable methods of risk management due to the inherent complexity of software development offshoring. Therefore, suitable methods and tools for the risk management specific to such projects are required. Firstly, this workshop will provide an insight into various aspects of the risk management of offshore software development. Secondly, tools and methods for the risk management will be discussed and presented. Thirdly, priorities for further research will be identified. The results of this workshop will, on the one hand, benefit companies sharing in the software development offshoring and, on the other hand, academics to identify the demand in the further research.