Initial motivation and progress with doctoral studies in computer science — A case study from a Finnish university

Success in doctoral education has been studied from many theoretical and practical perspectives, but very few studies focus specifically on student motivation. In practice, graduate schools usually try to evaluate applicants' motivation in the admission process, assuming they are able to identify the initial motivation that would predict a successful doctoral path. The aim of this study is to bring new understanding to this field by studying the relationship between the students' initial motivation in enrolling doctoral studies and their actual progress with the studies. This is a case study conducted in a Finnish research university with full-time doctoral students in computing. The resear…

The Role of Different Approaches in Inspection Process Improvement

There is a need to better understand improvement of software inspection practices. Typically process improvement is driven by different reference models like CMMI. In the previous work we found that such model based approach alone didn’t provide sufficient support for inspection process improvement. This paper outlines an overall picture of inspection process improvement and four different approaches for it. These approaches are seen as complementary and the focus of the paper is on describing their role in the improvement process.

Test-driven development in education

Test-Driven Development (TDD) was applied in educational setting right after it became well-known as a key practice of Extreme Programming (XP). Basically, there are many studies reporting positive experiences on TDD applied in different levels of a curriculum. In this paper, we discuss the role of TDD in education through the students' experiences. In our experiment, a challenging programming task was applied in order to see what kind of difficulties the students would encounter and discuss. The students' answers revealed several topics that require a careful treatment in teaching to avoid conceptual confusion. For example, the topics include the scalability of TDD, extent of single test, …

Issues in Software Inspection Practices

The motivation for this research comes from a need to improve software inspection practices in software organizations. Even if inspections are well defined and regularly used in an organization, there may be some problems which can greatly reduce inspection effectiveness. The paper presents a list of inspection related problems which are known in the literature. It also relates some experiences from two case organizations. In addition, this paper provides an approach which helps identifying problems of this kind and directing limited improvement resources effectively.

Software Inspections in Practice: Six Case Studies

Software inspections have been acknowledged as an important method in software engineering, but they are not well applied in practice. This paper discusses the current practices and the related problems based on six case studies in industrial settings. The analysis of inspection practices was organized according to ICMM, which is a model for systematically assessing and improving software inspection process maturity. The sample case organizations used inspections relatively regularly. The involved units are compared and the revealed practices, their characteristics, inspection problems and implications of the study discussed. The main problem areas were non-existent inspection training, lim…

Tarkastuskäytänteiden kehittäminen ohjelmistoja tuottavissa organisaatioissa

On the motivations to enroll in doctoral studies in Computer Science — A comparison of PhD program models

While student motivation has been intensively researched, only a few studies cover motivation at doctoral level and even less focus on doctoral education in Computer Science. In this paper we investigate the motivation of graduate students to pursue doctoral studies specifically in Computer Science. We interviewed 63 doctoral students, from two different doctoral models (traditional and structured) in Finland and Austria, on their initial reasons and experiences that led them to enroll in doctoral studies. We identified five disjoint main motivational drivers that relate with different aspects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Together with a measure of the strength of their initial mo…

Ohjelmistojen tarkastuskäytänteiden puutteet ja ongelmat teoriassa ja käytännössä

Understanding TDD in academic environment

Several studies have reported positive experiences with Test-Driven Development (TDD) but the results still diverge. In this study we aim to improve understanding on TDD in educational context. We conducted two experiments on TDD in a master's level university course. The research setting was slightly changed in the second experiment and this paper focuses on comparing the differences between the two rounds. We analyzed the students' perceptions and the difficulties they faced with TDD. The given assignment clearly affected the students' reflections so that the more difficult assignment evoked a richer discussion among the students. Additionally, some insights into teaching TDD are discusse…

Research has noticed that imparting TDD-like testing to an early computing curriculum is challenging because it increases technical and cognitive load for the students. This paper addresses the challenge with a software-based solution constructed to facilitate the process of writing tests. The solution allows using a compact while efficient syntax for formulating tests, writing tests into JavaDoc comments, thus close to the source code that implements intended functionalities, and automates the generation of actual test code. The constructed solution -- the ComTest tool -- has now been used in four introductory level programming course offerings. The paper presents the tool and concludes wi…

ICMM-a maturity model for software inspections

Software inspection is widely acknowledged as an important method in software engineering. However, there is a need to better understand how to implement and improve inspection practices. This paper introduces Inspection Capability Maturity Model (ICMM), which provides support for assessment and improvement of software inspection practices in a software organization. The model has been developed iteratively based on a comprehensive literature survey and experiences from eight case organizations. This paper includes a detailed description of the used followed research process, the structure of ICMM and the rationale for the defined criteria. Additionally, the role of this kind of model in in…