Szenario-basierter Systemtest von Software-Produktfamilien

Zusammenfassung In der Produktfamilienentwicklung werden durch zwei Entwicklungsprozesse, Domain und Application Engineering, zun"achst wiederverwendbare Entwicklungsartefakte produziert, um diese anschlie?end zur Konstruktion von kundenspezifischen Applikationen einzusetzen. Die Wiederverwendbarkeit wird durch die explizite Definition der Variabilit"at der geplanten Applikationen einer Produktfamilie erzielt. Diese proaktive Wiederverwendung ist bisher in den konstruktiven Entwicklungsphasen realisiert, jedoch noch nicht im Test. Mit ScenTED (Scen_ario based TE_st Case D_erivation) wird in diesem Beitrag eine wiederverwendungsorientierte Technik zur Testfallerstellung f"ur den Systemtest, dem Test eines ausf"uhrbaren Systems gegen spezifizierte Use-Cases, von Produktfamilien vorgestellt. ScenTED basiert auf zwei Kernideen: der Erhaltung der Variabilit"at in Testf"allen und der Szenario-basierten Verfeinerung der Testf"alle. Durch die Erhaltung der Variabilit"at wird die Wiederverwendbarkeit von Testf"allen gesichert; die Szenario-basierte Verfeinerung erm"oglicht Nachvollziehbarkeit durch die durchg"angige Nutzung von Szenarien. In diesem Beitrag wird die ScenTED-Technik an einem Beispiel erl"autert und Erfahrungen aus dem industriellen Einsatz diskutiert.

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Product family engineering consists of two development processes: Domain engineering and application engineering. Reuseable artefacts are created in the domain engineering process. These artefacts are used for the creation of customer specific applications during the application engineering process. Reusability is achieved with the explicit definition of variability that specifies the potential applications of the product family. The proactive reuse has been realized in the construnction phases of the development process, but not within the test phases. We propose ScenTED (Scen_ario based TE_st Case D_erivation) for the creation of reusable test cases for a use case based system testing in product family engineering. ScenTED has two key ideas: The first is the preservation of variability in test cases and the second idea is the scenario-based refinement of test cases. The preservation of variability ensures the reusability of test cases. The scenario-based refinement enables the traceability from requirements to test cases. We present the ScenTED technique in this article with an example and discuss an industrial case study.

CR Subject Classification D2.5     

Quantifying instantaneous performance in alpine ski racing

Alpine ski racing is a popular sport in many countries and a lot of research has gone into optimising athlete performance. Two factors influence athlete performance in a ski race: speed and the chosen path between the gates. However, to date there is no objective, quantitative method to determine instantaneous skiing performance that takes both of these factors into account. The purpose of this short communication was to define a variable quantifying instantaneous skiing performance and to study how this variable depended on the skiers' speed and on their chosen path. Instantaneous skiing performance was defined as time loss per elevation difference dt/dz, which depends on the skier's speed v(z), and the distance travelled per elevation difference ds/dz. Using kinematic data collected in an earlier study, it was evaluated how these variables can be used to assess the individual performance of six ski racers in two slalom turns. The performance analysis conducted in this study might be a useful tool not only for athletes and coaches preparing for competition, but also for sports scientists investigating skiing techniques or engineers developing and testing skiing equipment.     

How do public libraries function as meeting places?

How are libraries used as meeting places, and by whom? Through survey data, six categories of places are identified: the library as a “square,” as a place for meeting diverse people, as a public sphere, as a place for joint activities with friends and colleagues, as a metameeting place, and as a place for virtual meetings. Representative samples of the population in three townships in Oslo, each with a markedly different demographic profile, are surveyed. Multivariate regression analyses are performed to analyze why some people use the library for a range of meetings and others do not, as well as to examine variations in the use of the library for different kinds of meetings. Public libraries are shown to be used for a variety of meetings. Community involvement is more important than township and demographic variables in explaining variations in use of the library as a meeting place. Correlations between low income and low education and high use of the library as a meeting place were found, indicating that the library as a meeting place plays a substantial role in equalizing the possibilities of being an active citizen across social and economic differences. The study contributes to understanding the role of the public library in a multicultural context. The public library as a unique and complex meeting place has important implications for future librarianship.     

Challenges to Institutionalizing Participatory Extension: The Case of Farmer Livestock Schools in Vietnam

Abstract

Purpose: The objective of this article is to analyze the introduction of participatory extension approaches (PEA) in the predominantly supply-driven, hierarchical Vietnamese extension system. Drawing on the case of the so-called Farmer Livestock School (FLS) concept, the authors investigate the potential and challenges of scaling up and out the FLS/PEA principles of participatory training methods, encompassing intensive and interactive training sessions, group-based sharing of experience, practical learning, and learning-by-doing processes.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The article is based on data collected and synthesized from 36 pilot communes from 2000 to 2007 and draws on the extensive insider experience of two of its authors during their work for a DANIDA-funded livestock project.

Findings: At the micro-scale and with external support, FLS has been a successful experiment of using participatory extension approaches in farmer training and extension in the livestock sector. Yet, possibilities of scaling up and institutionalizing FLS remain a challenge given the capacity and resource limitations and the resistance at various levels within the Vietnamese extension system.

Practical Implications: The starting point for successfully institutionalizing participatory extension approaches should be to assess the existing system's root problems and capacities and then gradually and systematically introduce institutional innovations rather than aiming at a complete overhaul of a system that may result in the creation of a parallel universe.

Originality/Value: The FLS project provided a unique opportunity to study the enabling and constraining factors of institutionalizing participatory extension approaches in a traditionally top-down oriented extension system beyond the immediate duration of an externally orchestrated project.     

Metacognitive monitoring in university classes: anticipating a graded vs. a pass-fail test affects monitoring accuracy

Three field studies tested the hypothesis that anticipating a graded test as opposed to a pass-fail test enhances metacognitive monitoring. Participants were teacher candidates who completed a mid-term and a final test in psychology courses. Each participant chose whether the result of the final test should be evaluated with one of five grades or with a pass-fail decision. In both tests, participants answered true–false inference items about the contents of the course and indicated their confidence in the correctness of each answer. When a graded test was expected, confidence and the absolute accuracy of the confidence judgments increased and bias decreased to a greater extent than when a pass-fail decision was expected. However, expecting a grade increased participants’ confidence not only in correct answers but also in incorrect answers (Study 1). Feedback and instructions emphasizing the importance of accurate discrimination between correct and incorrect answers did not weaken this effect (Study 2). The generalizability of the findings was investigated by reanalyzing the test results of participants in eight other psychology courses (Study 3). The results are discussed in terms of the motivational consequences of grading.     

DEVELOPMENT, EVALUATION, AND VALIDATION OF A PAPER-AND-PENCIL TEST FOR MEASURING TWO COMPONENTS OF BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE “CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM”

One main focus of teacher education research concentrates on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). It has been shown that teachers’ PCK correlates with teaching effectiveness as well as with students’ achievement gains. Teachers’ PCK should be analyzed as one of the main important components to evaluate professional development programs. On this account, it is necessary to develop standardized measures of biology teachers’ topic-specific PCK that are labor-efficient. This paper presents a study on the development, evaluation, and validation of a paper-and-pencil test to measure biology teachers’ declarative PCK on the topic of blood and the human cardiovascular system. The development of the test was based, among other considerations, on a review of research literature on PCK and an analysis of 50 videotaped biology lessons. The final test instrument was comprised of 15 items distributed across 2 scales. The findings of the main study—with 93 preservice and in-service biology teachers and 12 biologists—confirmed that this measure of biology teachers’ declarative PCK was reliable, objective, and valid. In-service biology teachers scored higher on the test than preservice teachers (effect size Cohen’s d, 0.65) on one hand and, also, than biologists (Cohen’s d, 1.00) on the other hand. Future versions of this test should explore enlarging the scales and measuring procedural aspects of PCK.     

A high resolution laser scanning model of the Roman theater in Pinara,Turkey – comparison to previous measurements and search for the causes of damage

The archaeological site Pinara, southwest Turkey, which includes several remarkable objects of cultural heritage, has been the focus of several previous archaeoseismic studies. One of these examined the setting of the Roman theater in the east of Pinara by a lidar survey. A gross inclination of the stone rows of the auditorium of 0.81° towards N 314°E was interpreted as a consequence of recent coseismic tectonic movements. A new survey of the theater with a terrestrial phase laser scanner is the basis for a model with 15 times higher resolution and 28 times more data points. Parallel to the fieldwork in this study, the process and accuracy of the leveling of the 3D point clouds produced by the scanner was tested in a series of experiments. Based on the orientation of the blocks forming the seats of the theater, we suggest six sections with changing average inclination of the seats and a fault line separating a northern and a southern section. While the previously found overall inclination of the auditorium is confirmed by the new model and the dip direction agrees, the inclination is 0.58° compared to previously determined 0.81°. The almost perfect increase of inclination with the height of the first 10 entire seating rows and the nearly constant inclination from row 11 onward, makes systematic measurement errors during the construction a possible cause. This is an alternative scenario to the interpretation of a coseismic displacement of the conglomerate block on which the theater was built.