Handbook on Teaching Empirical Software Engineering

This handbook exploits the profound experience and expertise of well-established scholars in the empirical software engineering community to provide guidance and support in teaching various research methods and fundamental concepts. A particular focus is thus on combining research methods and their epistemological settings and terminology with didactics and pedagogy for the subject. The book covers the most essential contemporary research methods and philosophical and cross-cutting concerns in software engineering research, considering both academic and industrial settings, at the same time providing insights into the effective teaching of concepts and strategies.

To this end, the book is organized into four major parts. In the first part, the editors set the foundation with two chapters; one laying out the larger context of the discipline for a positioning of the remainder of this book, and one guiding the creation of a syllabus for courses in empirical software engineering. The second part of the book lays the fundamentals for teaching empirical software engineering, addressing more cross-cutting aspects from theorizing and teaching research designs to measurement and quantitative data analysis. In the third part, general experiences and personal reflections from teaching empirical software engineering in different settings are shared. Finally, the fourth part contains a number of carefully selected research methods, presented through an educational lens. Next to the chapter contributions themselves that provide a more theoretical perspective and practical advice, readers will find additional material in the form of, for example, slide sets and tools, in an online material section.

The book mainly targets three different audiences: (1) educators teaching empirical software engineering to undergraduate, postgraduate or doctoral students, (2) professional trainers teaching the basic concepts of empirical software engineering to software professionals, and (3) students and trainees attending such courses.

Daniel Mendez is professor of software engineering at the Blekinge Institute of Technology and Lead Researcher heading the research division Requirements Engineering at fortiss. His research is on empirical software engineering with a focus on interdisciplinary, qualitative research in requirements engineering and its quality improvement – all in close collaboration with the relevant industries. He serves as editorial board member for the Empirical Software Engineering Journal and the Journal of Systems and Software where he co-chairs the special tracks Reproducibility & Open Science (EMSE) and In Practice (JSS) respectively. He is a member of the ACM, the German Informatics Society, the German association of university professors and lecturers, and ISERN.

Paris Avgeriou is professor at the university of Groningen heading the SEARCH (Software Engineering and Architecture) group. His research interests lie in the area of software architecture, with a strong emphasis on architecture modeling, knowledge, evolution, patterns and technical debt. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Systems and Software, as well as an Associate Editor for IEEE Software. He is a member of the ACM and ISERN.

Marcos Kalinowski is professor of software engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinator of the ExACTa PUC-Rio R&D lab, which collaborates closely with industry. His research interest cover empirical software engineering with a focus on AI engineering, human factors, and software process and product quality. He serves as an editorial board member for the Journal of Systems and Software, where he co-chairs the In Practice track. He is a member of the ACM, IEEE, the Brazilian Computer Society, and ISERN.

Nauman bin Ali is a senior lecturer at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. His research interests include software analytics, lean software development, software process simulation and modeling, software testing, and empirical software engineering. He is a member of ISERN.