Blekinge Institute of Technology
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An Evidence Profile for Software Engineering Research and Practice
No full textEvidence-based software engineering has emerged as an important part of
software engineering. The need for empirical evaluation and hence evidence has
grown in the last couple of decades when developing new models, methods,
techniques and tools in research. Furthermore, industrial decision-making ought
to become more evidence-based. The objective here is to develop and present an
evidence-based profile, which could be used to divide pieces of evidence into
different types and hence creating an overall picture of evidence in a specific
case. The evidence profile is developed in such a way that it allows evidence
to be judged in context. The evidence profile consists of five types of
evidence, and the profile is illustrated for perspective-based reading. It is
shown how pieces of evidence can be classified into the different types. It is
concluded that this type of approach may be useful to capture the evidence with
respect to a specific topic and in a specific context. The further work
includes applying the evidence profile for evidence collected from different
type of studies and contexts
Expectations and Achievements: A Longitudinal Study on an Offshoring Strategy
No full textOffshore software development has gained momentum and most of software
companies today have implemented offshore strategies of some sort. Many of
these strategies are enforced by corporate top management and driven by
assumptions that lower development wages guarantee cheaper and better software
development. In practice, offshore software development is associated with many
risks, and achievement of the expected benefits is not as straightforward as
the rumor has it. In this paper we explore an implementation of an offshore
strategy in a Swedish software company that opened its offshore branch in
Russia. Based on extensive documentation analysis we create an overview of the
initially expected benefits and obstacles that prevailed among onshore product
and development unit managers. Years after implementation of the offshore
insourcing strategy we asked these managers about the achievement of their
expectations. We observed that the company documented various expected benefits
when implementing an offshoring strategy and also concerns that some of these
benefits might not be achieved. Seven years after its implementation, the
offshoring strategy was overall considered working, however the expected
benefits were not fully achieved. More importantly, several gaps were
identified, that suggest that the enforced strategy has resulted in a stable
but not beneficial collaboration from the onshore perspective
Selection of a Graduate Thesis Topic in a Multicultural Educational Environment
No full textThis article presents a case study, performed at Blekinge Institute of
Technology (BTH), Sweden, about the topic selection routines for a graduate
thesis. The study focuses on the international graduate students who are having
different academic cultures of their respective countries. Given that BTH has
succeeded in the provision of an academic environment that has been efficient
in absorbing different academic cultures in a productive manner at a reasonably
good scale. However, in a multi-cultural educational environment, it is a
challenge for most international students to adapt to the new academic culture
and select the graduate thesis topic according to their real potential. Our
findings gathered through an online survey, questionnaire, and focus group
discussion is presented. The conclusions indicate, albeit, BTH has well defined
routines for the thesis selection, the international graduate students face
problems at the stage of thesis selection. The article concludes with
suggestions to refine the thesis selection process at the micro level to help
both students and staff
Creating a learning environment for transformation: A case study of a course in sustainability leadership
No full textFor over 50 years, scientists and other thought leaders have been trying to
call attention to the degradation of the foundation of human civilization
through unsustainable behaviour (Carson 1962, Meadows et al. 1972, IGBP. 2004,
Millenium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, Stern 2007, Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change 2007, Rockström et al. 2009). The United Nations’ Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) has recently put renewed focus on
not only what we need to learn and teach in the field of sustainable
development, but also how we learn and teach about sustainable development.
Pedagogical methods such as lifelong learning, social learning, problem-based
learning, dialogue education, and transformational learning in Education for
Sustainable Development (ESD) have been put forward.
Transformative or transformational learning seems especially relevant to ESD as
deep transformational change on a personal level might be one of the key
aspects needed to facilitate a larger societal transformation. The chapter
presents research on transformational learning and the components necessary for
it, and provides a case study of a course that works specifically with
transformational learning for sustainability. The Advanced Societal Leadership
course is a 10-week course of the 10-month Masters in Strategic Leadership
towards Sustainability programme at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. This
course aims at providing learners with critical insights into how large-scale
societal transformation for sustainability might occur, and explores several
topics for social transformation. The chapter discusses the pedagogical design
of the course as well as some of the challenges and questions that the staff
has experienced over the last 9 years in imbedding transformational learning
and personal transformational change in a traditional university setting
Measuring Awareness in Cross-Team Collaborations – Distance Matters
No full textDeveloping and maintaining team awareness within and across teams working in
the same project helps team members in aligning their activities and
facilitates implicit coordination. This requires both task and presence
awareness. In this paper, we share our findings from a survey in which we
measured the level of team awareness in cross-team collaborations with varying
degree of separation. To measure the levels of awareness we asked questions
like who is who, who knows what, who is on a vacation, who depends on whom and
alike. Results from surveying 17 pairs of teams from 15 organizations indicate
that level of awareness in cross-team collaborations is generally lower than
that within the teams. We also found that task and presence awareness levels
are independent and can vary. In addition to distance, we identified a few
other factors with potential positive and negative influence on team awareness
Innovation for and by the People with Disabilities: A Case Study in Improvement of the Manual Wheelchair
No full textThis paper focuses on information-driven engineering, where information is
gathered by means of innovation for people and by the people. This case study
was carried out on innovation of a manual wheelchair. Through active
participation of person with disability (direct users) and their carers
(indirect user), knowledge awareness of the early design was increased.
Computer aided engineering tools were used for the development of virtual
prototype (VP) and after further feedback from direct and indirect users design
was adjusted. Additionally, Physical prototype was built to practically
demonstrate the new features to users and finally the prototype was readjusted
to bridge user requirement even more. This innovation process identifies
additional improvement aspects and contributes beyond fundamental personal
needs and increases well being
Subband Modulator Kalman Filtering for Single Channel Speech Enhancement
No full texthis paper presents a single channel speech enhancement
technique based on sub-band modulator Kalman filtering for
laryngeal (normal) and alaryngeal (Esophageal speech) speech signals. The noisy
speech signal is decomposed into sub-bands and subsequently each sub-band is
demodulated into its modulator and carrier components. Kalman filter is applied
to modulators of all sub-bands without altering the carriers. Performance of
the proposed system has been validated by Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for
laryngeal and Harmonic to Noise Ratio (HNR) for alaryngeal speech. An
improvement of 20% has been observed in MOS over sub-band Kalman filtering for
laryngeal speech, while 3 to 4 dB enhancement in HNR has been observed for
alaryngeal speech over the full-band Kalman filtering
Mining the Digital Information Networks
No full textThe main theme of the 17th International Conference on Electronic Publishing
(ELPUB) concerns different ways to extract and process data from the vast
wealth of digital publishing and how to use and reuse this information in
innovative social contexts in a sustainable way. We bring together researchers
and practitioners to discuss data mining, digital publishing and social
networks along with their implications for scholarly communication, information
services, e-learning, e-businesses, the cultural heritage sector, and other
areas where electronic publishing is imperative.
ELPUB 2013 received 36 paper submissions. The peer review process resulted in
the acceptance of 16 papers. From the accepted papers, 8 were submitted as full
papers and 8 as extended abstracts. These papers were grouped into sessions
based on the following topics: Data Mining and Intelligent Computing,
Publishing and Access, and Social Computing and Practices.
James MacGregor and Karen Meijer-Kline from the Public Knowledge Project (Simon
Fraser University Library, Canada) lead the pre-conference workshop on June 12.
The workshop is entitled “The Future of E-publishing: An Introduction to Open
Journal Systems & Open Monograph Press”.
The main program on June 13–14 features two keynotes. Stephan Shakespeare
(YouGov, UK) will deliver a keynote entitled “Getting value out of our digital
trace: a strategy for unleashing the economic and justice potential of data
sharing”. Professor Felix S. Wu (University of California at DavisUSA) will
deliver a keynote entitled “Social computing leveraging online social
informatics”. ELPUB 2013 also features a panel discussion entitled “Setting
research data free – problems and solutions”. The panel consists of the
aforementioned keynote speakers as well as Professor David Rosenthal (Stanford
University, USA) and Hans Jörgen Marker (Swedish National Data Service, Sweden).
We believe that the topics featured in the program of this year's ELPUB
conference are diverse and exciting. Firstly, we would like to thank members of
the ELPUB Executive Committee who, together with the Local Advisory Committee,
provided valuable advice and assistance during the entire process of the
organization. Secondly, we would like to thank our colleagues in the Program
Committee who helped in assuring the quality of the conference throughout the
peer reviewing process. Lastly, we acknowledge the Local Organization team for
making sure that all efforts materialized into a very interesting scientific
event. Thank you all for helping us maintain the quality of ELPUB and deserve
the trust of our authors and attendees
Test Case Selection for Black-Box Regression Testing of Database Applications
No full textContext: This paper presents an approach for selecting regression test cases in
the context of large-scale, database
applications. We focus on a black-box (specification-based) approach, relying on
classification tree models to model
the input domain of the system under test (SUT), in order to obtain a more
practical and scalable solution. We perform
an industrial case study where the SUT is a large database application in
Norway’s tax department.
Objective: We investigate the use of similarity-based test case selection for
supporting black box regression
testing of database applications. We have developed a practical approach and
tool (DART) for functional black-box
regression testing of database applications. In order to make the regression
test approach scalable for large database
applications, we needed a test case selection strategy that reduces the test
execution costs and analysis eort. We
used classification tree models to partition the input domain of the SUT in
order to then select test cases. Rather than
selecting test cases at random from each partition, we incorporated a
similarity-based test case selection, hypothesizing
that it would yield a higher fault detection rate.
Method: An experiment was conducted to determine which similarity-based
selection algorithm was the most
suitable in selecting test cases in large regression test suites, and whether
similarity-based selection was a worthwhile
and practical alternative to simpler solutions.
Results: The results show that combining similarity measurement with
partition-based test case selection, by
using similarity-based test case selection within each partition, can provide
improved fault detection rates over simpler
solutions when specific conditions are met regarding the partitions.
Conclusions: Under the conditions present in the experiment the improvements
were marginal. However, a
detailed analysis concludes that the similarity-based selection strategy should
be applied when a large number of test
cases are contained in each partition and there is significant variability
within partitions. If these conditions are not
present, incorporating similarity measures is not worthwhile, since the gain is
negligible over a random selection
within each partition
Applied Multi-Expert Decision Making Issue Based on Linguistic Models for Prostate Cancer Patients
No full textAbstract—In this paper, two models, one is called the probabilistic model and
the other is known as the model of 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representations,
are applied to solve multi-expert decision making issues (MEDM). A MEDM problem
is considered, in which a group of physicians are independently asked about
assessing the effectiveness of a set of treatment therapies for a prostate
cancer patient. The objective of this paper is to find the most common judgment
by means of these two models. Moreover, fuzzy linguistic terms are used to
express the experts’ opinions and s-parametric membership functions are
designed to depict the fuzzy linguistic terms