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Related work There is no standard methodology for software engineering education. The basic rationale for including student projects in the educational activities is to let students get a foretaste of what a professional in the field is expected to do, and how. Not all software engineering courses include such a laboratory part. Even those which do so, may largely differ in the way projects are set-up and organized, e.g. whether or not do they involve collaborations with industrial sponsors, and, in either case, who is in charge of defining project objectives and task assignments. Because of the rapid pace of change in software engineering methods and technologies, industrial impact through education is a persistently hot topic in specialized conferences on the subject, see for example the panel CSEET (2006) at the forthcoming edition of CSEET. The laboratory project set-up in the present case study is motivated by firm reasons of principle. The instructors held a constructivist viewpoint, which may be traced back to Vygotsky's social interaction theory Vygotsky (1978), takes due account of the educational value of training students to take up the responsibility of setting their own learning objectives, and exploits the opportunities of web-based cooperation to implement a scaffolding strategy to that take-up purpose. While the debate on software engineering education has been most often centered on the specific traits of the discipline so far, the importance of adopting proper educational theories is starting to be recognized—see for example Basili & Basili (2006) at the aforementioned conference. Our approach seems consistent with that direction. Conclusions In this paper we have presented and briefly analyzed a case study in software engineering education, spanning over a seven-year evolution, characterized by a blend of educational techniques: traditional classroom lectures, textbook and lecture notes, as well as a web-based cooperation platform, supporting interaction and selforganization of laboratory projects. The laboratory project set-up in the present case study is motivated not only by reasons of principle, as recalled in the previous section, but also by practical constraints. The largely selforganized character of the laboratory project work turns out to be a necessity, since the bare number of students enrolled in the course would make it impossible to provide a continued guidance and daily organization of all projects by just one or two instructors. In other words, scarcety of human resources puts a severe limit on the level of guidance that could be effectively provided under a different arrangement. The following conclusions can be drawn from the case study summarized in the previous sections. First, regardless of their “easiness”, the first questions proposed as exercises always turn out to be the most difficult to get answered properly. The main difficulty is to be traced, in this case, to the novelty of the methodological mindset wherein the initial subject—applicability of software engineering principles to web design case studies—is framed. Second, the issue of endowing project proposals with clearly stated educational objectives has persistently turned out to be the most significant reason for delayed set-up of team projects, despite the provision of detailed guidelines to this purpose in the laboratory edu-cational material. The reason for this difficulty is, again, the novelty of a methodological mindset where metacognition is explicitly meant to play the most significant role. Students are just not used to that, they are rather inclined to focus on the functional features of their intended product than on their own educational gain. This is surely not surprising, at the initial project set-up stage, nor is it necessarily a bad sign; it just highlights the usefulness of scaffolding strategies where the level of guidance provided by instructors is significant at the early stages, and then progressively decreasing. Third, regardless of the variety of alternative organization models proposed for group work, the vast majority of students privilege the most established one, viz. that which appears to be most popular from the previous editions of the course. This can be seen as an instance of the well-known “popularity is attractive” principle from the theory of network evolution Dorogovtsev & Mendes (2003). Our final, perhaps most interesting observation is that, even in self-organized project-based learning, the instructors' role remains critical, especially in the initial orientation provided to the students in order to grasp the 61
educational goals and the various roles they may undertake to achieve them. This educational aim seems to be most effectively achieved by prompting and exploiting all available opportunities for meta-cognitive reinforcement, which fosters deeper inquiry capabilities, knowledge and insight. References Basili, V.R., & Basili, P.A. (2006). Software Engineering Instruction and Education Theory: a Dialogue, retrieved July 24, 2006 from http://db-itm.cba.hawaii.edu/cseet2006/Basili.php. BSCW (2005). Basic Support for Cooperative Work, retrieved October 2, 2006 from http://bscw.fit.fraunhofer.de/. CSEET (2006). CSEET 2006 Panel: Industrial Impact through Education – Lessons Learned from Barry Boehm's Contributions to Software Engineering, retrieved July 24, 2006 from http://www.sbl.tkk.fi/CSEET06panel. Chang, K.-E., Sung, Y.-T., & Lee, C.-L. (2003). Web-based collaborative inquiry learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19 (1), 56-69. Dorogovtsev, S., & Mendes, J. (2003). Evolution of Networks, Oxford, England: OUP. Nesbit, J., & Winne, P. (2003). Self-regulated inquiry with networked resources. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 29 (3), retrieved October 2, 2006 from http://www.cjlt.ca/content/vol29.3/cjlt29-3_art5.html. Piccinini, N. (2005). Norme d'uso del BSCW. Integrazione per il lavoro di laboratorio, retrieved October 27, 2006 from http://amarena.sci.univr.it/edu/pub/bscw.cgi/2482086/NormeUsoBSCWLab-in.html. Piccinini, N., & Scollo, G. (2005). Fare laboratorio in rete: tracce di un’esperienza di web-learning. DIPAV Quaderni, 12/13, 143-164. Salovaara, H. (2005). An exploration of students’ strategy use in inquiry-based computer-supported collaborative learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 21 (1), 39-52. Scollo, G. (2005). Architetture software e Ingegneria del software, Note delle Lezioni, retrieved October 9, 2006 from http://amarena.sci.univr.it/edu/pub/bscw.cgi/2481306/AIS0506-in. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 62
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Guidelines for authors Submissions
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How Does Educational Technology Ben
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References ADL (Advanced Distribute
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Bender, D. M., & Vredevoogd, J. D.
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(see Figure 2). The incorporation o
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Figure 4: Example of Summary Image
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The competitive nature of design cl
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Dias, L. B. (1999, November). Integ
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materials built into the system. Th
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This theory of multimedia learning
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E-Tutor (with video). Two weeks aft
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empirically tested in TML environme
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Rieber, L. P., (1990). Animation in
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Appendix B The following 44 items r
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Appendix C A Sample of Exam Questio
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Appendix D Perceived Usefulness Que
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Kirkpatrick, and Peck (2001) have a
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2001). The system thus aims to assi
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a strong agreement between the two
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of the dynasty. 3. Information on
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Comparing works designed using the
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Tselios, N., Stoica, A., Maragoudak
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strategies during their interaction
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P(B|D) is the probability of a netw
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Online help adaptation using Bayesi
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AUSM that will return the most prob
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direct experimentation with a new s
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Figure 7. An example of use of the
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Cooper, J. & Herskovits, E. (1992).
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Goldberg, A. K., & Riemer, F. J. (2
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members increased flexibility. They
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Oppenheimer, T. (1997, July). The c
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The basis of reform in science educ
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technology and are not confident in
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participants that learning as a gro
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A hierarchy of Systems Identifying
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the change agents to recognize the
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Nonis, A. S., & O’Bannon, B. (200
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maintaining the interest levels of
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Focus group interviews with our stu
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course and again at the end of the
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second phase of valuing, commitment
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Kinzie, M. B., Whitaker, S. D., Nee
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Although this work is based on a st
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Website Design The MTP website (www
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Researchers, for review and coding
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quality that are the focus of the M
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Kelley, M. A., Whitaker, S. D., Nee
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or underserved populations. For exa
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2004 Baruch College Computer Center
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professional-level tools and resour
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Hepp, P., Hinostroza, E., Laval, E.
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international standard. The ISO pro
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Choquet, C., & Corbière, A. (2006)
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Hummel, H., Manderveld, J., Tatters
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Karagiannidis, C. (2006). Book revi
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Glenn, L. (2006). Book review: Visu
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