This paper proposes an approach to identify pitfalls of students in programming exercise by using snapshots of source code. Proposed method calculates distances between a snapshot and submitted source code by student. This method identifies pitfalls based on these distances and then, provides pitfalls to the lecturers. We applied our method into the snapshots which were recorded in the actual programming exercise. As a result, we identified 46 pitfalls from snapshots of 37 students. We confirmed the reasons of these pitfalls contained misunderstanding toward programming language specification, an algorithm to solve the exercise and content of the exercise. Lecturers can provide appropriate feedback to the students by using the proposed method.

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In this paper, we present our qualitative research and analysis methods of student activities in their role of information volunteer, which is a service-learning-based course in which students engage in information education activities at elementary schools. We observed six selected groups and interviewed nine selected groups, using a case-code matrix and case studies as our analysis methods. As a result, we identified 15 cases and categorized these into four categories, i.e., planning, implementation, communication, and reflection. Each group seemed to have experienced continuous work planning and work improvement processes because all groups remarked at least one case in all categories. Successful group remarks were related to many cases, but unsuccessful group remarks were not in the communication category. We created a three-staged rubric with specific assessment criteria based on our research results such that students can self-evaluate and reflect on their activities.

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There is an educational program to train advanced ICT human resources who can find problems from society and solve problems using ICT. In this training, the goals for each learner are different to learn the skills necessary for problem solving set by the learner. And we should continually improve PBL instruction and composition flexibly. Thus, it is necessary to grasp the understanding of the learner, but it is difficult. In this research, we measured learning by analyzing “Experience Map of learning” data with text mining expressed by learners. We propose a method to use this for the design and improvement of the training program. We implemented this method with three years training program, and it improved.

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Information system developers often encounter the problem that clients do not understand the significances. Therefore, it is difficult to analyze “the demand”. Project Based Learning(PBL) has the same problem as well. To solve it, we thought go back to the basis of fundamental informatics. Moreover, we introduced an idea, “it is a human being who adds the value to the information, and if we produce a loop of languages which changes his/her behavior, a new value generates”, into PBL. In this PBL, we take the dental practitioner who is in the serious business situation as a model case. Firstly, we suggested the loop connecting the doctor, the client, with his patients, the end-users, with “the patient's card” as the information system (the first phase). Through it, he realized that using the information system increases the number of patients who revisit. Secondly, we proposed and constructed the website, another information system, which puts him in the loop of information (the second phase). It has his social contribution activities and a link with his SNS. As a result, it was the client who changed the most significantly. He voluntary engaged in encouragement of the prospective and present patients to come to his hospital as a sender of the information. People frequently point out the importance on the ability of “suggesting the information system”. We realized it is effective to produce “a trick” to encourage a client to change his/her behavior related to the information on construction of information system through this PBL.

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Along with the spread of IoT technology, it is required to nurture IoT human resources who can develop innovative IoT systems in cooperation with others. Therefore, many educational institutions conduct exercise classes that let students develop IoT systems based on the procedure manuals. Such institutions often adopt PBL to nurture team development skills and IoT skills of students together. In this paper, on the premise of basic IoT education to develop a pre-determined IoT system on the PBL, we propose a PBL style that aims to deal with problems that are prone to occur in PBL such as differences between knowledge and skills. Although there were skill differences among the students in our experiment, they could actively experience various IoT technologies and cooperate to develop the IoT system.

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Software testing is conducted to verify whether the software satisfies its specifications derived from requirements. However, when the numbers of requirements and test cases increase, it is difficult to grasp how many requirements are tested. In this paper, we propose a requirements coverage visualization process. The process uses document similarities to find traceability links and provides two views for comprehensively and precisely grasping the coverage. Experimental results demonstrate that the visualization process provides beneficial views to analyze which requirements are tested or not tested.

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[in Japanese]

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Project-Based Learning (PBL) is focused as one of practical educational methods. So, system development PBLs have been worked out in information-related departments or schools. On the one hand, participating one PBL is not enough to learn various skills to be learn. But at the same time, participating two or more PBLs may be difficult under the situation the education term is limited. To catch up on insufficient participation of students for PBLs, we have developed an educational material in which students learn simulated team development by oneself. And we use this material practically on a certain PBL-based curriculum. Some of students learn skills using the material instead of participation to real PBL. And the other students normally participate the PBL. Then, we analyze the difference between them for evaluating the educational material.

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In programming exercise, it is difficult for educators to grasp each student's progress in real-time and provide them with accurate advice. In this research, we focus on exploratory programming. Exploratory programming is the repetition circle of edit-compile-run when a programmer needs to deal with an unfamiliar portion of source code. Our proposed method identifies how each student solves or struggles each assignment by detecting exploratory programming behaviors. As for the result of applying our proposed method on real programming exercise, we found the difference between approaches performed by each student to the same assignment. Moreover, our proposed method allows educators to identify the factors of compile/runtime errors by students more smoothly.

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In this study, it is purpose that we support students to manage their PBL(Project-Based Learning). In PBL which students manage, delay of schedule and temporary tasks are easy to happen because of immature man-hour estimation. In a general software development, project members use man-hour estimation methods. But, it is difficult that participants use these estimation methods because they are busy to develop software. On the other hand, much data can be collected in PBL. However, it has not been used enough.
So, we propose the estimation method which is based on CoBRA(Cost estimation, Benchmarking and Risk Assessment). This method uses past PBL data and calculates man-hour it takes to implement their system. In this study, we conducted the experiment targeting PBL in progress in order to take a survey from participants.

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This paper proposes a method for evaluating comprehensiveness of a test set attached with an OSS web applicaiton based on uses of the OSS web application in operation time, and a interactive method for amplifying the comprehensiveness. In the OSS web application with various functions, no-tested uses of the functions would occure in operation time. Using HTTP packet capture and replay tool, the uses of the web application in operation time can be replayed. However, it is still a difficult task for a normal tester to find the uses which are effective for amplifying the comprehensiveness of the test set from big capture data. In our approach, then, by extracting test conditions corresponding to uses of an OSS web application from capture data in test and operation time, and by aggregating/visualizing the test conditions as compact table, it let a normal tester effectively find and understand the uses which has never been tested. And by auto-generating replay scripts corresponded to some test conditions choiced by the tester, the comprehensiveness of the test set can be improved gradually. A case study results, which uses an OSS web application called Redmine and its capture data gathered for 48 days in operation time, shows usefulness of our proposed method.

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We present synchronized recursive timed automata (SRTA) that extend timed automata with a stack in which each frame contains multiple real valued clocks. SRTA are an extension of dense-timed pushdown automata (TPDA) of Abdulla et al. As with TPDA, timed transitions of an SRTA synchronously increase the values of all the clocks within its stack at the same rate. Our contribution is to show the decidability of the configuration reachability problem of SRTA. On the basis of a thorough study of the proof structure of Abdulla et al., we present a simpler and more modular proof that applies several abstractions to the concrete semantics and consists of their forward and backward simulations. Our proof enables to extend their decidability result of the location reachability problem to the configuration reachability problem of SRTA. We use the region designed by Abdulla et al. for TPDA instead of the conventional region in the theory of timed automata to establish a key technical lemma.

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This paper was withdrawn due to a request by the authors.

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In this paper, focusing on the problem that estimation accuracy of software development effort greatly varies among software projects, we propose a two-step effort estimation method, and conduct a feasibility study of the method. In the proposed method, given a project to be estimated, we evaluate the dependability of effort estimation for the project, that is, we evaluate whether the effort can be accurately estimated or not for the project. In case that the dependability is high, we conduct the estimation. Otherwise, estimation is avoided. As a result of an experiment to assess the feasibility of the proposed method, the residual square mean turned out to be a suitable measure of dependability; and, by avoiding the estimation when a project belongs to the high residual square mean group, the estimation error was reduced, which indicates the effectiveness of the two-step estimation. Also, by relaxing the conditions to avoid the estimation, we found that it is possible to increase the number of project to be estimated, while decreasing the estimation error.

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