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Case Study-Based Educational Tools for Teaching a Software V&V Course at the Undergraduate Level

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Conference

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Seattle, Washington

Publication Date

June 14, 2015

Start Date

June 14, 2015

End Date

June 17, 2015

ISBN

978-0-692-50180-1

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Software and Programming

Tagged Division

Computers in Education

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

14

Page Numbers

26.332.1 - 26.332.14

DOI

10.18260/p.23671

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/23671

Download Count

847

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Paper Authors

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Priya Manohar Robert Morris University

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Dr. Priyadarshan (Priya) Manohar is an Associate Professor of Engineering and Co-Director Research and Outreach Center (ROC) at Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, PA. He has a Ph. D. in Materials Engineering (1998) and Graduate Diploma in Computer Science (1999) from University of Wollongong, Australia and holds Bachelor of Engineering (Metallurgical Engineering) degree from Pune University, India (1985). He has worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (2001 – 2003) and BHP Institute for Steel Processing and Products, Australia (1998 – 2001). Dr. Manohar held the position of Chief Materials Scientist at Modern Industries, Pittsburgh (2003 – 2004) and Assistant Manager (Metallurgy Group), Engineering Research Center, Telco, India (1985 – 1993). He has published over 55 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences including a 2007 Best Paper Award by the Manufacturing Division of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), three review papers and three book chapters. He has participated in numerous national and international conferences. He is a member of ASM International, TMS, ACerS, AIST, ASEE, and a registered Chartered Professional Engineer. Dr. Manohar’s research interests include mathematical and computer modeling of materials behavior, thermo-mechanical processing of steels and other metallic materials, microstructural characterization, and structure – property relationships. He has conducted a number of technical failure investigations, consulted on various materials-related problems, and acted as an expert witness in the Court of Law. Dr. Manohar is the immediate past chair of the Manufacturing Division of ASEE and the current Chair of ASM Pittsburgh Chapter.

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Sushil Acharya Robert Morris University

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Acharya joined Robert Morris University in Spring 2005 after serving 15 years in the Software Industry. His teaching involvement and research interest are in the area of Software Engineering education, Software Verification & Validation, Data Mining, Neural Networks, and Enterprise Resource Planning. He also has interest in Learning Objectives based Education Material Design and Development. Acharya is a co-author of “Discrete Mathematics Applications for Information Systems Professionals- 2nd Ed., Prentice Hall”. He is a member of Nepal Engineering Association and is also a member of ASEE, and ACM. Acharya was the Principal Investigator of the 2007 HP grant for Higher Education at RMU. In 2013 Acharya received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant for developing course materials through an industry-academia partnership in the area of Software Verification and Validation. Acharya is also the Director of Research and Grants at RMU.

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Peter Y. Wu Robert Morris University

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Peter Y. Wu is professor of Computer and Information Systems at Robert Morris University. He earned Ph.D. in Computer System Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He worked for IBM Research Division, first as a postdoctoral research fellow and subsequently a technical staff member at the T.J. Watson Research Center. He was the chief software engineer and a founding partner of UJB Solutions, LLC, a consulting company in production planning, for two years. He previously held faculty appointments at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the University of Pittsburgh. His current research interests are in software engineering, and geographic information systems.

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Ali A. Ansari Virginia State University

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Walter W. Schilling Jr. Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Walter Schilling is an Associate Professor in the Software Engineering program at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received his B.S.E.E. from Ohio Northern University and M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Toledo. He worked for Ford Motor Company and Visteon as an Embedded Software Engineer for several years prior to returning for doctoral work. He has spent time at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and consulted for multiple embedded systems companies in the Midwest. In addition to one U.S. patent, Schilling has numerous publications in refereed international conferences and other journals. He received the Ohio Space Grant Consortium Doctoral Fellowship and has received awards from the IEEE Southeastern Michigan and IEEE Toledo Sections. He is a member of IEEE, IEEE Computer Society and ASEE. At MSOE, he coordinates courses in software quality assurance, software verification, software engineering practices, real time systems, and operating systems, as well as teaching embedded systems software.

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Abstract

Case Study Based Educational Tools for Teaching Software V&V Course at Undergraduate LevelOne of the critical problems facing software industry today is the lack of appreciation of the fullbenefits that can be derived from Software Verification and Validation (V&V) and an associatedproblem of shortage of adequately trained V&V practitioners. To address this situation, softwareV&V course curriculum is being improved at author’s institution via a NSF-funded project. Thebasic objectives of this project are to improve software education to make it well aligned withacademic research as well as industry best practices. In addition, it aimed that the course materialcould also be used to enhance on-the-job professional training in SW industry settings, therebyhelping to increase the pool of professionals with contemporary V&V knowledge and skills.The new course curriculum enhancement described in this paper is guided by academic researchand industry best practices that focus on four specific V&V topics: requirements engineering,reviews, configuration management, and testing. Among many educational tools that are beingdeveloped to achieve project objectives, the work related to the development of case studies isdescribed here. Historically, case studies have been as educational tools in business, law andmedicine but not so much in software engineering. The hypothesis is that case studies would beeffective educational tools to introduce real-world professional practices into the classroomwhich would help the students in identifying and solving problems, and develop a perspective onknowledge application. In this paper we describe a set of V&V related case-studies that we havedrawn from industry experiences and developed them as pedagogical tools. These case-studiescover several important topics in SW V&V domain such as legal issues in software, softwareconsumer protection, and requirements from the customers’ perspectives. We will also report onthe results of initial implementation of these case studies in the classroom.

Manohar, P., & Acharya, S., & Wu, P. Y., & Ansari, A. A., & Schilling, W. W. (2015, June), Case Study-Based Educational Tools for Teaching a Software V&V Course at the Undergraduate Level Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.23671

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