Developing and Evaluating Learning Materials to Introduce Human Error Concepts in Software Engineering Courses: Results from Industry and Academia

Vaibhav Anu, Gursimran Walia, Gary Bradshaw, Mohammad Alqudah

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

[Background]: This Research Category Full Paper presents the results of authors' efforts to develop and evaluate learning materials for introducing Software Engineering (SE) students to the Cognitive Psychology concept of human errors (specifically to those human errors that occur during software development). During the last few years, the authors have developed, through a rigorous literature review and empirical investigation, human error intervention instrumentation and supporting training/teaching material. The intervention instrument consists of a corpus of human errors and a tool to support human error based software requirements inspections. The primary aim of developing this instrumentation and training material is to impart SE/CS students with the knowledge about the most frequently committed human errors during the software development process. [Goal and Method]: First, a study was conducted with Industry Practitioners with the goal of examining if the practitioners believed that human errors and human error training are useful and relevant to the software development process. Next, based on feedback from the practitioners, a study was conducted in an undergraduate Software Engineering course where students were trained using the human error instrument and were asked to perform error based requirements inspections. The high-level goal of this paper is to evaluate whether requirements inspections supported by human errors can be used to deliver knowledge about software engineering human errors as well as knowledge about requirements inspections (a key industry skill) to students. [Results]: Results showed that industry practitioners found the human error instrumentation and training useful. Based on their feedback, when the training was administered to students, it helped students understand those human errors that are the frequently committed during the software development process.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2019 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE 2019
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781728117461
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2019
Event49th IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE 2019 - Covington, United States
Duration: 16 Oct 201919 Oct 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
Volume2019-October
ISSN (Print)1539-4565

Conference

Conference49th IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCovington
Period16/10/1919/10/19

Keywords

  • human errors
  • psychology
  • requirements inspection
  • software engineering education
  • taxonomy

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