In contrast to software engineering, which relies on relatively well established development approaches, there is a lack of a proven methodology that guides Web engineers in building reliable and effective Web-based systems. Currently, Web engineering lacks process models, architectures, suitable techniques and methods, quality assurance, and a systematic approach to the development process. As a result, Web engineering is still struggling to establish itself as a reliable engineering discipline. The cost of poor reliability and effectiveness has serious consequences for the acceptability of the systems. One of the main reasons for the low acceptance of Web-based applications is the large gap between design models and the implementation model of the Web. It is therefore not surprising that Web engineering education still focuses on technologies, rather than on critical skills that facilitate engineers to solve real-world problems effectively. To meet the challenges of Web engineering, current education must be aligned with a pedagogical model capable of empowering and supporting the acquisition of critical skills. To do this, a new learning environment must be created that promotes change in both pedagogy and course material, in effect, altering the role of the teacher, the expectations for students, and many other educational aspects. This article describes a learner-centered pedagogical model rooted in the constructivist

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Ways of experiencing the act of learning to program: A phenomenographic study of introductory programming students at university

Abstract. The paper argues for the importance of the constructivist learning theory to software development education. Constructivism frames learning less as the product of passive transmission than a process of active construction whereby learners construct their own knowledge based upon prior knowledge and experience. Now that a number of software development courses offer projectbased teaching, it seems that the importance of a constructivist perspective has been implicitly welltaken in the current practice. What these approaches explicitly lack is a concrete methodology of how to carry out the constructivist perspective and its consequences for learning. This paper reports on a constructivist approach to object-oriented software development at the undergraduate level. It explores methodological aspects of the approach and discusses the results from its evaluation. Key words: constructivism,learning cycle, object-orientedsoftware development, online resources, unified modeling language.

Abstract. This paper examines reading as done by programmers engaged in software development. Reading is an activity we feel should be of fundamental interest to studies of programming, but the practical achievement of which has not been closely examined. We give examples of programmers reading in pairs, and reading alone, and show reading in both cases to be explainable in terms of shared social practices. These practices are not determined by the code but nor are they purely socially constructed; rather they lie in the linkage between the code and programmers ’ ways of reading the code. We discuss (1) how features of day-to-day coding work create pertinent occasions for reading a certain piece of code, (2) how programmers order and expect there to be an order to code, and (3) how programmers have ways of analysing code in order to make sense of it. This is an ethnomethodological study that draws from ethnographic fieldwork at a professional software development company.

This manuscript is to provide an action research report on the issues behind the prototyping of a student-centered creative knowledge environment (CKE), which focuses on developing student responsibility, making learning meaningful, promoting overt knowledge construction, performing learner assessment, and showcasing learner achievements. The primary idea is to create an electronic knowledge space where students are enabled to learn through constructing rich portfolios of knowledge work. The issue of learner responsibility lies in student’s willingness to identify learning deficits, setting goals, managing the learning process, and monitoring the learning strategies they use. The issue of meaningful learning lies in providing students with realistic problems, which are conducive to the development of capable problem solvers. The issue of active knowledge construction lies in providing students with opportunities to engage in high-level thinking, reflection, and articulation activities, with suitable support to scaffold students in their pursuit of active learning.