Software Engineering Experimentation2012VT
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Course plan
No of lectures
15 (flexible)
About 4 weeks of lectures, delivered online *asynchronously*. About 8 weeks of
reading, presenting, and discussing research papers. About 3 weeks of student
presentations of their projects.
Recommended for
Graduate students in all aspects of computing who will carry out empirical studies as part of their research.
The course was last given
Fall 2008 at George Mason University (never at Linkoping).
Goals
How to design computing experiments, while handling bias, confounding factors,
and threats to validity
How to evaluate empirical studies
How to document and write a research paper
How to present research results
Prerequisites
None
Organization
This course will be multi-university, online, and asynchronous. The host
university will be George Mason University and students from Skövde University
and Linköping University will be welcomed.
Lectures will be recorded and posted online for the first portion of the course
for asynchronous viewing by students.
The next portion of the course will use online, asynchronous discussion forums.
The final portion of the course will have students presenting their projects in
a classroom, face-to-face with the professor and local students.
Contents
General knowledge of science and experimentation.
Experimentation in computing and software engineering.
Specific empirical papers will be read and discussed.
Literature
Papers will be taken from the recent literature, most prominently Springer's
journal of Empirical Software Engineering and IEEE journals and conferences.
The exact papers are now posted on the website:
http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/classes/see/papers.html
Lecturers
Jeff Offutt
Examiner
Jeff Offutt
Examination
Students will be evaluated
1) A semester-long empirical research project, culminating in a
conference-style paper. Students will be offered pre-defined projects, and free
to choose their own projects related to their research interests.
2) An oral conference-style presentation of the project.
3) Written evaluations of published empirical papers.
4) Participation discussion and other aspects of the course.
Credit
6 hp
Comments
A classroom or seminar room will only be required for the final project
presentations, although a kickoff meeting at the beginning of the semester
might be helpful.
The exact number of weeks allocated to each part of the course will depend on
the total number of students enrolled.
Page responsible: Director of Graduate Studies