Existing tools for building and deploying complex Web sites are inadequate for dealing with the software production process that involves connecting with underlying logic in a unified and systematic way. As a solution, we propose the OO-H method, an object-oriented software approach that captures relevant properties involved in modeling and implementing Web application interfaces.

Purpose: Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications which are accessed in various contexts, i.e. through different devices, by users with various interests, at anytime from anyplace around the globe. For such full‐fledged, complex software systems, a methodologically sound engineering approach in terms of model‐driven engineering (MDE) is crucial. Several modeling approaches have already been proposed that capture the ubiquitous nature of web applications, each of them having different origins, pursuing different goals and providing a pantheon of concepts. This paper aims to give an in‐depth comparison of seven modeling approaches supporting the development of UWAs.Design/methodology/approach: This methodology is conducted by applying a detailed set of evaluation criteria and by demonstrating its applicability on basis of an exemplary tourism web application. In particular, five commonly found ubiquitous scenarios are investigated, thus providing initial insight into the modeling concepts of each approach as well as to facilitate their comparability.Findings: The results gained indicate that many modeling approaches lack a proper MDE foundation in terms of meta‐models and tool support. The proposed modeling mechanisms for ubiquity are often limited, since they neither cover all relevant context factors in an explicit, self‐contained, and extensible way, nor allow for a wide spectrum of extensible adaptation operations. The provided modeling concepts frequently do not allow dealing with all different parts of a web application in terms of its content, hypertext, and presentation levels as well as their structural and behavioral features. Finally, current modeling approaches do not reflect the crosscutting nature of ubiquity but rather intermingle context and adaptation issues with the core parts of a web application, thus hampering maintainability and extensibility.Originality/value: Different from other surveys in the area of modeling web applications, this paper specifically considers modeling concepts for their ubiquitous nature, together with an investigation of available support for MDD in a comprehensive way, using a well‐defined as well as fine‐grained catalogue of more than 30 evaluation criteria.

Today’s digital society has turned the development of students’ computational thinking capabilities into a critical factor for their future success. As higher education institutions, we need to take responsibility for this development in every degree course we offer, and provide students with the kind of subjects and activities that best contribute to this aim. In this paper, we study the impact of following an introductory programming course on the development of the computational thinking capabilities of university students. In order to achieve this aim, a concurrent cohort observational study was carried out in which we measured both the subjective and objective computational thinking capabilities of 104 participants (50 first year students enrolled on a Bachelor’s degree course in Psychology at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), and 54 first year students enrolled on a Bachelor’s degree course in Health Information Systems at the University of Alicante (UA)). The statistical procedures applied to test our hypotheses were a two-way mixed ANOVA, a paired-sample T-test and an independent-sample T-test. The data shows that the group at UA had an initial higher subjective perception of their computational capabilities than the group at UCAM. This perception was supported by their objective scores, which were also significantly higher. However, the subjective assessment of computational capability of the UA group diminished after exposure to the programming course, contrasting with the fact that their objective computational capabilities improved significantly. In the UCAM group, both subjective and objective capabilities remained constant over time. Based on these results, we can conclude that computational thinking capabilities are not developed naturally, but need to be trained. Providing such training to all our students, and not only to those enrolled on undergraduate degrees in engineering, is of paramount importance to allow them to face the challenges of their future professions. This paper empirically demonstrates the extent to which exposing subjects to a programming course may contribute to this aim.

The need to remotely monitor people with disabilities has increased due to growth in their number in recent years. The democratization of Internet of Things (IoT) devices facilitates the implementation of healthcare-monitoring systems (HMSs) that are capable of supporting disabilities and diseases. However, to achieve their full potential, these devices must efficiently address the customization demanded by different IoT HMS scenarios. This work introduces a new approach, called Modeling Scenarios of Internet of Things (MoSIoT), which allows healthcare experts to model and simulate IoT HMS scenarios defined for different disabilities and diseases. MoSIoT comprises a set of models based on the model-driven engineering (MDE) paradigm, which first allows simulation of a complete IoT HMS scenario, followed by generation of a final IoT system. In the current study, we used a real scenario defined by a recognized medical publication for a patient with Alzheimer’s disease to validate this proposal. Furthermore, we present an implementation based on an enterprise cloud architecture that provides the simulation data to a commercial IoT hub, such as Azure IoT Central.