TY - GEN
T1 - Teaching software engineering to end-users
AU - Umarji, Medha
AU - Pohl, Mark
AU - Seaman, Carolyn
AU - Koru, A. Güneş
AU - Liu, Hongfang
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Bioinformatics software is an example of immensely complex and critical scientific software, and this domain provides an excellent illustration of the role of end user computing in the sciences. To explore these interesting characteristics from a software engineering standpoint, we had conducted an exploratory survey of bioinformatics developers. The survey had a range of questions about people, processes and products. As software engineering researchers, we realized that the survey results had important implications for the education of bioinformatics software professionals. Through this paper we intend to open an avenue of discussion about software engineering knowledge that should be taught to end user programmers, based on our findings in the bioinformatics domain. In addition to the survey results we went through the curricula of more than fifty bioinformatics programs as well as the contents of over fifteen textbooks. We observed that there was no mention of the role and importance of software engineering practices essential for creating dependable software systems. We present a set of recommendations for improving bioinformatics education in terms of software engineering principles and ways that they apply in the context of end-user development.
AB - Bioinformatics software is an example of immensely complex and critical scientific software, and this domain provides an excellent illustration of the role of end user computing in the sciences. To explore these interesting characteristics from a software engineering standpoint, we had conducted an exploratory survey of bioinformatics developers. The survey had a range of questions about people, processes and products. As software engineering researchers, we realized that the survey results had important implications for the education of bioinformatics software professionals. Through this paper we intend to open an avenue of discussion about software engineering knowledge that should be taught to end user programmers, based on our findings in the bioinformatics domain. In addition to the survey results we went through the curricula of more than fifty bioinformatics programs as well as the contents of over fifteen textbooks. We observed that there was no mention of the role and importance of software engineering practices essential for creating dependable software systems. We present a set of recommendations for improving bioinformatics education in terms of software engineering principles and ways that they apply in the context of end-user development.
KW - Bioinformatics
KW - Education
KW - End-user programming
KW - Software engineering
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=57049180866&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=57049180866&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1370847.1370856
DO - 10.1145/1370847.1370856
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:57049180866
SN - 9781605580340
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
SP - 40
EP - 42
BT - 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2008 Co-located Workshops - Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on End-user Software Engineering, WEUSE IV
T2 - 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2008 - 4th International Workshop on End-user Software Engineering, WEUSE IV
Y2 - 12 May 2008 through 12 May 2008
ER -