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The Human Factor in Computer Science and How to Teach Students to Care: An Experience Report

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Socioinformatics - The Social Impact of Interactions between Humans and IT

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Complexity ((SPCOM))

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Abstract

The human factor plays a crucial role in software engineering, so software engineers should pay sufficient attention to it. In this paper, we present our experience with teaching software-engineering students to care about the human factor. In particular, we report on a course that we conducted at the University of Magdeburg, in which we applied explorative and interactive techniques to teach the basics of human-behavior measurement. In summary, we received mostly positive feedback of the students, and found that after the course, students are able to properly take care of the human factor.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=355604.361591

  2. 2.

    http://humanized.com/weblog/2007/03/05/are_adaptive_interfaces_the_answer

  3. 3.

    There are several books (e.g., [5]) and online sources (e.g., University of Zurich (http://www.hochschuldidaktik.uzh.ch/hochschuldidaktikaz.html)) that give comprehensive overviews of explorative and interactive teaching methods.

References

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  2. Braught G (2005) Teaching empirical skills and concepts in computer science using random walks. In: Proceedings of technical symposium on computer science education (SIGCSE), St. Louis. ACM, pp 41–45

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  3. Craik F, Tulving E (1975) Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. J Exp Psychol 104(3):268–294

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  4. Joint IEEE Computer Society/ACM Task Force for CC2001 (2001) Computing Curricula 2001. http://www.acm.org/education/curric_vols/cc2001.pdf

  5. Silberman M (1996) Active learning: 101 strategies to teach any subject. Pearson

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  6. Soloway E, Ehrlich K (1984) Empirical studies of programming knowledge. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 10(5):595–609

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Christian Kästner and Stefan Hanenberg for fruitful discussion on the design of the course. This work has been supported by the German Research Foundation (AP 206/4, AP 206/5, and AP 206/6).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Passau, Passau, Germany

    Janet Siegmund & Sven Apel

Authors
  1. Janet Siegmund
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  2. Sven Apel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Janet Siegmund .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, TU Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Katharina Zweig

  2. Faculty Social Sciences, TU Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Wolfgang Neuser

  3. Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Volkmar Pipek

  4. Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Markus Rohde

  5. Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Ingo Scholtes

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Siegmund, J., Apel, S. (2014). The Human Factor in Computer Science and How to Teach Students to Care: An Experience Report. In: Zweig, K., Neuser, W., Pipek, V., Rohde, M., Scholtes, I. (eds) Socioinformatics - The Social Impact of Interactions between Humans and IT. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09378-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09378-9_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09377-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09378-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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