1,721,106 research outputs found

    A Visual Language Based System for Designing and Presenting E-learning Activities

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    SFX Get it!(opens in a new window)|View at Publisher| Export | Download | Add to List | More... International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2005, Pages 1-19 Visual language-based system for designing and presenting e-learning courses (Article) Costagliola, G., Ferrucci, F., Polese, G., Scanniello, G. Università di Salerno, Italy View references (21) Abstract In this chapter we present a system supporting instruction designers in the design and deployment of e-learning courses. The system includes integrated modules for several authoring activities, such as the definition of knowledge content objects, and the creation of assessment and self-assessment tests. The distinguishing characteristics of the proposed system is that it is based on a suite of visual languages, enabling the modelling of different aspects of the construction process for Web-based distance courses. The languages include a Learning Activity Diagram, which extends UML Activity Diagrams to make them suitable for modelling distance course structures; a Self-Consistent Learning Object language used to define knowledge contents; and a Test Maker Language for specifying assessment and self-assessment tests. The use of visual languages provides an intuitive and friendly system user interface that allows instruction designer to easily compose and analyze the distance course structure and keep track of the knowledge acquisition process individually for each learner

    SMUG: A selective MUtant generator tool

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    In this tool demo paper, we present a prototype of a tool for the selective generation of mutants in Java source code. We named this tool as SMUG (Selective MUtant Generator). Given two subsequent versions of a program, SMUG creates mutants by considering only those methods modified in, or added to, the second version. This is why it is a selective generator of mutants. On the basis of created mutants, SMUG generates a specified number of faulty versions of the program. We implemented SMUG as an Eclipse plug-in and employed this plug-in to assess regression test selection approaches. Therefore, SMUG has to be intended as a means to advance research in regression testing. We applied SMUG to create a total number of 200 faulty versions of 7 small-to-medium Java programs. A screencast of SMUG in action is available at www2.unibas.it/sromano/SMUG.html

    DUM-Tool

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    With object-oriented programming languages (e.g., Java or C#), the identification of unreachable source code may be very complex especially when working at method level. To deal with the detection of unreachable methods, we have defined an approach named DUM: Detecting Unreachable Methods. We implemented a prototype of a supporting software we named DUM-Tool. It works on Java byte-code and detects unreachable methods by traversing a graph-based representation of a subject software

    Exploring the use of rapid type analysis for detecting the dead method smell in Java code

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    Rapid Type Analysis (RTA) is an algorithm for call graph construction, which is known to be fast and to well approximate virtual method calls. In this paper, we explore its use in the context of refactoring, namely we defined an approach that relies on RTA for the detection of the dead method smell in Java code. We implemented this approach in a prototype of supporting tool we named Dead Code Finder (DCF). We empirically assessed DCF (and the underlying approach) through an experiment on four open-source Java desktop application. We compared DCF with three baseline tools. The results indicate that DCF outperforms these baselines in terms of accuracy of the detected dead methods

    Assessing communication media richness in requirements negotiation

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    A critical claim in software requirements negotiation regards the assertion that group performances improve when a medium with different richness level is used. Accordingly, the authors have conducted a study to compare traditional face-to-face communication, the richest medium and two less rich communication media, namely a distributed three-dimensional virtual environment and a text-based structured chat. This comparison has been performed with respect to the time needed to accomplish a negotiation. Furthermore, as the only assessment of the time could not be meaningful, the authors have also analysed the media effect on the issues arisen in the negotiation process and the quality of the negotiated software requirements

    Are unreachable methods harmful? Results from a controlled experiment

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    In this paper, we present the results of a controlled experiment conducted to assess whether the presence of unreachable methods in source code affects source code comprehensibility and modifiability. A total of 47 undergraduate students at the University of Basilicata participated in this experiment. We divided the participants in two groups. The participants in the first group were asked to comprehend code base containing unreachable methods and implement five change requests in that code base. The participants in the second group were asked to accomplish exactly the same tasks as the participants in the first group, however, the source code provided to them did not contain any unreachable methods. The results of the study indicate that code comprehensibility is significantly higher when source code does not contain unreachable methods. However, we did not observe a statistically significant difference for code modifiability. From these results, we distill lessons and implications for practitioners as well as possible avenues for further research
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