Margaret Hamilton | RMIT University (original) (raw)

Papers by Margaret Hamilton

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

Australasian Computing Education Conference, 2009

Learning to program is difficult, a situation that is largely responsible for high attrition rate... more Learning to program is difficult, a situation that is largely responsible for high attrition rates in Computer Science schools. Novice programmers struggle to grasp an early understanding of programming, which can lead to frustration and eventually surrender. The problem has generated interest in a range of enquiries, and has given impetus to the need for a teaching-research nexus towards a better understanding of novice programming problems. We continue the trend in this paper and report on a study we have conducted of novice programmers' efforts in summative assessment. Our study involves multiplechoice questions and coding question drawn from a programming examination. We analyse the answers provided by novices to final examination questions, and attempt to understand why students make such errors. We aim to categorise and classify the questions in the context of two well-known learning taxonomies: Bloom's Taxonomy and the SOLO Taxonomy.

Proceedings of the tenth conference on Australasian computing education - Volume 78, 2008

Programming is central to Computer Science and cognate disciplines, and poses early-learning chal... more Programming is central to Computer Science and cognate disciplines, and poses early-learning challenges in problem-solving and coding. Since the recent past the School of Computer Science & Information Technology (RMIT University) has provided a student mentoring service to assist novice student programmers with their programming, indeed, to build up their confidence in programming. The service has received favourable feedback from students and, as an interesting aside, has had the added benefit of increasing mentors' confidence and improving mentors' communication skills. Mentors volunteer their services under a University leadership initiative, and are not paid to assist students. In light of such success, we secured a University action-research teaching and learning grant, to investigate aspects of the service delivered to date. While mentoring has been shown to be helpful for novice student programmers to learn and improve their programming, less recognised, but of equal importance, is the value to mentors through the skills and experience they gain. This paper reports early findings of a dual-purpose research investigation into the mentoring service. The research project seeks to discover ways to improve the mentoring service for novice student programmers, as well as to enhance a range of qualities in mentors.

2005 Australian Software Engineering Conference

In recent years, the size and complexity of information systems has grown almost without bound by... more In recent years, the size and complexity of information systems has grown almost without bound by hardware or software, with a resulting increased emphasis on using a software development methodology in the belief that by doing so, the experience of other, perhaps more experienced, developers can be re-used. Recent studies however, have found that developers do not adhere rigidly to a methodology, but usually adapt it to their specific needs. However, the extent to which individual software architects apply a specific software architecture development method in practice is largely unexplored. This paper reports on the in practice use of a proprietary software architecture development method, the IBM Custom Application Design. It describes the current state of understanding of application of software architecture methods, explains the research approach applied, reports on the results of the survey and workshops, and describes possible future work. We found that software architects, like software and requirements engineers, do not adhere rigidly to a method. Furthermore, we have identified that there are multiple levels at which the modification to a method can be undertaken. These are "Tailoring", "Adapting" and "Customizing. We also found that a unique version of a method is created for each project. We also found that IBM IT architects rely extensively on tools and techniques for visual communication as one of the key ways in which they work. Th ese are important findings for commercial organizations which develop and/or use methods, and for academic institutions which teach software architecture.

In this paper we report our experience of substantially reducing the extent of assignment plagiar... more In this paper we report our experience of substantially reducing the extent of assignment plagiarism during the COVID-19 affected period. We did this by decomposing the authentic assignment into five formative milestones emphasizing higher order thinking. Students had to submit five three-minute videos demonstrating how each milestone was reached, why the particular strategy was adapted and what could have been done better. We evaluated the effectiveness of our approach by comparing the assignment plagiarism pattern with the previous COVID-19 affected semester and by correlating the performance in formative tasks with performance in the final randomized test. Our results suggest formative video submissions can substantially reduce plagiarism in project-based courses and can reduce the reliance on the final test for measuring the learning outcomes. The survey on student perceptions reveals use of video milestone submissions helped to improve motivation, self-efficacy and learning outcomes.

This paper introduces a framework for software sustainability profiling. The goal of the framewor... more This paper introduces a framework for software sustainability profiling. The goal of the framework is to analyse sustainability requirements for long-living software systems, focusing on usability and readability of the sustainability profiles. To achieve this goal, we apply a quantitate approach such as fuzzy rating scale-based questionnaires to rank the sustainability requirements, and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to analyse the results of questionnaires and to provide a basis for system profiling. The core profiling elements provided by our framework are (1) a sustainability five-star rating, (2) visualisation of the five sustainability dimensions as a pentagon graph detailing combination for individual, social, technical, economic and environmental dimensions, and (3) a bar graph of overall sustainability level for each requirement. To ensure sustainability, the proposed profiling framework covers the five dimensions of sustainabili...

The demand for sustainable software is increasing, as the understanding of the importance of sust... more The demand for sustainable software is increasing, as the understanding of the importance of sustainability aspects is developing in the software engineering community. The most effective decisions related to sustainability of software can be made in the early stages of software development. To support these decisions, we introduce Sustainability Profiling for Software (SuSoftPro) tool that can assist in analysing sustainability requirements. In this paper, we analyse the core features of SuSoftPro in comparison with two other approaches, which utilise MultiCriteria Decision Analysis. We also present a case study we conducted using SuSoftPro: analysis of sustainability aspects of a Skin Cancer Information System.

BACKGROUND Previous research has established that engineering students are able to complete creat... more BACKGROUND Previous research has established that engineering students are able to complete creative problem solving tasks effectively using either a computer or a pen-and-paper approach and that several factors including self-efficacy, open-mindedness and reflection have been linked to effective problem solving performance. As a result, computer based tools designed to teach creative problem solving skills, should enhance the development of these factors at least as well as a traditional pen-and-paper based approach. There is currently a lack of understanding as to whether using a computer has any beneficial or detrimental effect regarding facilitating enhancement of these factors during creative problem solving activities. Understanding whether students consider each platform to be effective and how this compares to their performance, may help engineering educators to best identify the means for both increasing the problem solving skills of students, and providing it though an env...

IEEE Access, 2018

In this paper, we address the neighborhood identification problem in the presence of a large numb... more In this paper, we address the neighborhood identification problem in the presence of a large number of heterogeneous contextual features. We formulate our research as a problem of queue wait time prediction for taxi drivers at airports and investigate heterogeneous factors related to time, weather, flight arrivals, and taxi trips. The neighborhood-based methods have been applied to this type of problem previously. However, the failure to capture the relevant heterogeneous contextual factors and their weights during the calculation of neighborhoods can make existing methods ineffective. Specifically, a driver intelligence-biased weighting scheme is introduced to estimate the importance of each contextual factor that utilizes taxi drivers' intelligent moves. We argue that the quality of the identified neighborhood is significantly improved by considering the relevant heterogeneous contextual factors, thus boosting the prediction performance (i.e., mean prediction error < 0.09 and median prediction error < 0.06). To support our claim, we generated an airport taxi wait time dataset for the John F. Kennedy International Airport by fusing three real-world contextual datasets, including taxi trip logs, passenger wait times, and weather conditions. Our experimental results demonstrate that the presence of heterogeneous contextual features and the drivers' intelligence-biased weighting scheme significantly outperform the baseline approaches for predicting taxi driver queue wait times. INDEX TERMS Heterogeneous contextual features, neighborhood identification, wait time prediction, feature weighting.

Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2011

Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the way people in information industries engage with their ... more Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the way people in information industries engage with their clients, collaborate on projects, promote their services and gather community knowledge. In this paper, we describe the impact of industry adoption of Web 2.0 technologies on an information management course. The students in this course are either already working in or plan to be entering information professions such as librarianship, archiving, records management, information architecture, and information and knowledge management. The lecturer and tutors for this course are changing the way learning is assessed and constructively aligning it with industry expectations for library and information graduates. Specifically in this paper we focus on the impact of the Web 2.0 affordances on student learning, the assessment process, and constructive alignment of intended learning outcomes with industry expectations in an information management blogging assignment. These findings are from the f...

Proceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE on Working Group Reports, 2015

As the term 'information technology' has many meanings for various stakeholders and continues to ... more As the term 'information technology' has many meanings for various stakeholders and continues to evolve, this work presents a comprehensive approach for developing curriculum guidelines for rigorous, high quality, bachelor's degree programs in information technology (IT) to prepare successful graduates for a future global technological society. The aim is to address three research questions in the context of IT concerning (1) the educational frameworks relevant for academics and students of IT, (2) the pathways into IT programs, and (3) graduates' preparation for meeting future technologies. The analysis of current trends comes from survey data of IT faculty members and professional IT industry leaders. With these analyses, the IT Model Curricula of CC2005, IT2008, IT2017, extensive literature review, and the multinational insights of the authors into the status of IT, this paper presents a comprehensive overview and discussion of future directions of global IT education toward 2025.

International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science, 2015

Advances in computer mediated communication technologies have sparked and continue to facilitate ... more Advances in computer mediated communication technologies have sparked and continue to facilitate the proliferation of online courses, degree programs, and educational institutions. Leading the way with these advances has been the use of asynchronous discussion forums. However merely setting up a discussion forum does not always ensure quality participation and interaction. The way the course is managed has an impact on the participation as well. This paper compares the difference in course management over four study periods and discusses the resulting consequences on the participation and achievement of the students. This paper also investigates the quality of interaction as perceived by fully online students. The main benefits of this research are that it provides a guideline regarding what course management factors can make the difference in online participation in fully online courses, and how the quality of interaction can be designed.

Proceedings of the 16th annual conference reports on Innovation and technology in computer science education - working group reports, 2011

ACM 16th innovation and technology in computer science education annual conference: working group... more ACM 16th innovation and technology in computer science education annual conference: working group reports (ITiCSE-WGR '11),

Software architecture methods play a central role in the development of large enterprise computer... more Software architecture methods play a central role in the development of large enterprise computer systems. However, the extent to which individual experienced IT architects employ a software architecture method is largely unknown. In this paper, we surveyed a group of experienced architects, and set up an "in practice" field study of some of these architects to explore the way they applied a well documented software architecture development method. Among the findings to emerge are that architects modify their method more regularly than previously recognised, and that tools for visual communication are the most commonly used tools by these architects.

Computer Science & Information Technology ( CS & IT ), 2015

Evaluating the user experience of cross-platform interactive systems has become a research issue ... more Evaluating the user experience of cross-platform interactive systems has become a research issue of increasing importance. There is a lack of clear concepts and definitions for testing, evaluating or even teaching cross-platform user experience. In this paper, we review the actual meanings and interpretations of different concepts in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) relevant to cross-platform service usage. We also investigate the traditional definitions of usability and user experience before extending them to develop precise definitions for crossplatform usability and user experience. Our paper builds on existing theories to establish the theoretical foundations that can help us better conceptualise cross-platform user experience evaluation.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008

X3D-UML utilises X3D (eXtensible 3D) to enable standards-based advanced 3D UML visualisations. Us... more X3D-UML utilises X3D (eXtensible 3D) to enable standards-based advanced 3D UML visualisations. Using X3D-UML, 3D UML State Machine Diagrams have been evaluated against actual user tasks and data, using the Sequential Evaluation methodology. The results of User Task Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation and Formative Evaluation phases provide clear evidence that the use of UML extended with 3D is a practical solution for visualising complex system behaviour. RoseRT model metrics show between 56%-90% of state machine diagram work would benefit from such 3D UML extensions; hence the 3D improvement can deliver considerable benefit to organisations.

Lecture Notes on Software Engineering, 2015

Ubiquitous technologies are changing our lives. We are becoming more connected and able to conduc... more Ubiquitous technologies are changing our lives. We are becoming more connected and able to conduct our computing tasks anywhere at anytime from any device. Vertical interaction with an individual interactive system is no longer the only way to achieve tasks. Currently, users can interact horizontally with multiple user interfaces to achieve their tasks. This has created a need for measuring usability of multiple interactive systems, concerning users horizontal interaction beside their vertical interaction. In this paper, we surveyed the actual meanings and interpretations of usability and its attributes across several standards and models. We found that the existing usability standards and models do not consider horizontal usability aspects. Therefore, taking into consideration the characteristics of user interaction with multiple interactive systems, a hierarchical model, which is called Cross-Platform Usability Measurement (CPUM), has been developed. This model decomposes cross-platform usability into 12 factors. These factors were further decomposed into measurable criteria, and finally into specific metrics.

Proceedings of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research, 2008

We have applied Simon's system for classifying computing education publications to all three year... more We have applied Simon's system for classifying computing education publications to all three years of papers from ICER. We describe the process of assessing the inter-rater reliability of the system and fine-tuning it along the way. Our analysis of the ICER papers confirms that ICER is a research-intensive conference. It also indicates that the research is quite narrowly focused, with the majority of the papers set in the context of programming courses. In addition we find that ICER has a high proportion of papers involving more than one institution, and high proportions of papers on the themes of ability/aptitude and theories and models of teaching and learning.

Proceedings of the sixth conference on …, 2004

The issues surrounding curriculum design of many Computer Science and Software Engineering degree... more The issues surrounding curriculum design of many Computer Science and Software Engineering degree programs are many and complex. In particular, the question of whether prior programming knowledge has any bearing on a student's success in learning and applying techniques for Software Analysis and Design is largely unresolved.We undertook this study because as part of the continuous development of our degree

Leonardo, 2011

This research project demonstrates the technosocial possibilities that result from creating local... more This research project demonstrates the technosocial possibilities that result from creating localized mediated spaces or ‘meshworks’ using Bluetooth in order to publish independently produced content. Bluetooth technology is a double-edged sword. It is a meshwork for sharing media freely between mobile device users in public places such as shopping centres and private spaces such as the home and the workplace. It presents opportunities for the design of innovative creative projects, however technical issues, user acceptance and competition for the user's attention provide continuing challenges.