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Background: Test suites are frequently used to quantify relevant software attributes, such as quality or productivity. Problem: We have detected that the same response variable, measured using different test suites, yields different…
Contribution: This article analyzes the learning effectiveness of a virtual educational escape room for teaching software engineering and compares this activity with traditional teaching through a randomized controlled trial. Background:…
The software engineering research community is productive, yet it faces a constellation of challenges: swamped review processes, metric-driven incentives, distorted publication practices, and increasing pressures from AI, scale, and…
In recent years, Software Engineering (SE) scholars and practitioners have emphasized the importance of integrating soft skills into SE education. However, teaching and learning soft skills are complex, as they cannot be acquired passively…
Background: software engineering research (SE) lacks theory and methodologies for addressing human aspects in software development. Development tasks are undertaken through cognitive processing activities. Affects (emotions, moods,…
Debugging is a central yet complex activity in software engineering. Prior studies have documented debugging strategies and tool usage, but little theory explains how experienced developers reason about bugs in large, real-world codebases.…
There have been recent calls for research on the human side of software engineering and its impact on various factors such as productivity, developer happiness and project success. An analysis of which challenges in software engineering…
The 2019 edition of Stack Overflow developer survey highlights that, for the first time, Python outperformed Java in terms of popularity. The gap between Python and Java further widened in the 2020 edition of the survey. Unfortunately,…
Providing consistent summative assessment to students is important, as the grades they are awarded affect their progression through university and future career prospects. While small cohorts are typically assessed by a single assessor,…
The heterogeneity in the organization of software engineering (SE) research historically exists, i.e., funded research model and hands-on model, which makes software engineering become a thriving interdisciplinary field in the last 50…
This paper presents a game based on storytelling, in which the players are faced with ethical dilemmas related to software engineering specific issues. The players' choices have consequences on how the story unfolds and could lead to…
Much of software engineering research focuses on tools, algorithms, and optimization of software. Recently, we, as a community, have come to acknowledge that there is a gap in meta-research and addressing the human-factors in software…
Software engineering bots - automated tools that handle tedious tasks - are increasingly used by industrial and open source projects to improve developer productivity. Current research in this area is held back by a lack of consensus of…
Controlled experiments are a core research method in software engineering (SE) for validating causal claims. However, recruiting a sample of participants that represents the intended target population is often difficult or expensive, which…
In the software industry, artificial intelligence (AI) has been utilized more and more in software development activities. In some activities, such as coding, AI has already been an everyday tool, but in software testing activities AI it…
Secure software engineering is a fundamental activity in modern software development. However, while the field of security research has been advancing quite fast, in practice, there is still a vast knowledge gap between the security experts…
Prior research has raised concerns about students' over-reliance on large language models (LLMs) in higher education. This paper examines how Computer Science students and instructors engage with LLMs across five scenarios: "Writing",…
Background: Research software plays an important role in solving real-life problems, empowering scientific innovations, and handling emergency situations. Therefore, the correctness and trustworthiness of research software are of absolute…
As software continues to permeate nearly every facet of modern life, the complexity and ubiquity of digital services underscore the need for sustainable, effective, and inclusive software development practices. Although software engineering…
Software engineering (SE) faces significant diversity challenges in both academia and industry, with underrepresented students encountering hostile environments, limited representation, and systemic biases that hinder their academic and…