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In scientific research, evidence is often based on empirical data. Scholars tend to rely on students as participants in experiments in order to validate their thesis. They are an obvious choice when it comes to scientific research: They are usually willing to participate and are often themselves pursuing an education in the experiment’s domain. The software engineering domain is no exception. However, readers, authors, and reviewers do sometimes question the validity of experimental data that is gathered in controlled experiments from students. This is why we will address this difficult-to-answer question: Are students a proper substitute for experienced professional engineers while performing experiments in a typical software engineering experiment. As we demonstrate in this paper, it is not a “yes or no” answer. In some aspects, students were not outperformed by professionals, but in others, students would not only give different answers compared to professionals, but their answers would also diverge. In this paper we will show and analyze the results of a controlled experiment in the source code quality domain in terms of comparing student and professional responses. We will show that authors have to be careful when employing students in experiments, especially when complex and advanced domains are addressed. However, they may be a proper substitution in cases, where non-advanced aspects are required.
Luka Pavlič; Marjan Heričko; Tina Beranič. An Expert Judgment in Source Code Quality Research Domain—A Comparative Study between Professionals and Students. Applied Sciences 2020, 10, 7088 .
AMA StyleLuka Pavlič, Marjan Heričko, Tina Beranič. An Expert Judgment in Source Code Quality Research Domain—A Comparative Study between Professionals and Students. Applied Sciences. 2020; 10 (20):7088.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLuka Pavlič; Marjan Heričko; Tina Beranič. 2020. "An Expert Judgment in Source Code Quality Research Domain—A Comparative Study between Professionals and Students." Applied Sciences 10, no. 20: 7088.
SMEs represent a significant share of business companies in Europe. Their limitations might be overcome by using value chains, resulting in successful development and growth also within traditionally low-digitalized, natural fiber-based domains. Reaching a sustainable competitive advantage for natural fiber-based value chains is possible by boosting the digitalization of the included SMEs. The digitalization level can be improved by properly addressing the detected digitalization issues and challenges. This paper aims at proposing a novel comprehensive approach for assessing the digitalization level of natural fiber-based value chains and the respective SMEs. Using the proposed dimensions, indicators, and corresponding measurement instruments, the digitalization level of a particular SME, as well as of the entire value chain of SMEs can be assessed. The paper additionally depicts a practical demonstration for applying the proposed approach within two case studies. The proposed approach favors low-digitalized SMEs to enter and benefit from the digitalized value chains, as well as provides the benefits and facilitates the growth and sustainability of the existing natural fiber-based value chains.
Aida Kamišalić; Martina Šestak; Tina Beranič. Supporting the Sustainability of Natural Fiber-Based Value Chains of SMEs through Digitalization. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8121 .
AMA StyleAida Kamišalić, Martina Šestak, Tina Beranič. Supporting the Sustainability of Natural Fiber-Based Value Chains of SMEs through Digitalization. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (19):8121.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAida Kamišalić; Martina Šestak; Tina Beranič. 2020. "Supporting the Sustainability of Natural Fiber-Based Value Chains of SMEs through Digitalization." Sustainability 12, no. 19: 8121.
Software maintenance is one of the key stages in the software lifecycle and it includes a variety of activities that consume the significant portion of the costs of a software project. Previous research suggest that future software maintainability can be predicted, based on various source code aspects, but most of the research focuses on the prediction based on the present state of the code and ignores its history. While taking the history into account in software maintainability prediction seems intuitive, the research empirically testing this has not been done, and is the main goal of this paper. This paper empirically evaluates the contribution of historical measurements of the Chidamber & Kemerer (C&K) software metrics to software maintainability prediction models. The main contribution of the paper is the building of the prediction models with classification and regression trees and random forest learners in iterations by adding historical measurement data extracted from previous releases gradually. The maintainability prediction models were built based on software metric measurements obtained from real-world open-source software projects. The analysis of the results show that an additional amount of historical metric measurements contributes to the maintainability prediction. Additionally, the study evaluates the contribution of individual C&K software metrics on the performance of maintainability prediction models.
Mitja Gradišnik; Tina Beranič; Sašo Karakatič. Impact of Historical Software Metric Changes in Predicting Future Maintainability Trends in Open-Source Software Development. Applied Sciences 2020, 10, 4624 .
AMA StyleMitja Gradišnik, Tina Beranič, Sašo Karakatič. Impact of Historical Software Metric Changes in Predicting Future Maintainability Trends in Open-Source Software Development. Applied Sciences. 2020; 10 (13):4624.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMitja Gradišnik; Tina Beranič; Sašo Karakatič. 2020. "Impact of Historical Software Metric Changes in Predicting Future Maintainability Trends in Open-Source Software Development." Applied Sciences 10, no. 13: 4624.
The introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) concepts to IT students entails many challenges. Due to the system’s complexity, newcomers need an extensive amount of time to be able to use it independently. Additionally, the learning preferences and characteristics of digital natives differ significantly from previous generations. Therefore, the use of alternative learning approaches is desirable. To achieve the best possible learning outcomes, it is advisable to implement learning approaches that require students’ active participation, for example, an experiential learning approach. A variation is an ERPsim business simulation game, which we used within the ERP systems course. The game is implemented in sequential rounds, whereby each round ends with a review of the collected experiences. The simulation game was used at the beginning of the course to ease the introduction of ERP concepts for IT-related students. This paper is the result of three years of research into the perceived usability of SAP ERP introduced with the business simulation game, combined with the results of a study evaluating students’ opinions, knowledge, and skills. Perceived usability was measured using a System Usability Scale (SUS), while the students’ experiences were gathered using a self-evaluation questionnaire. The study revealed the positive impact of the experiential learning approach that was used. Students evaluated the usability of SAP ERP as OK, and empirical analysis confirmed that the use of the simulation game for introducing the ERP concepts resulted in anticipated knowledge and skills, while increasing the students’ intent for future engagement.
Tina Beranič; Marjan Heričko. Introducing ERP Concepts to IT Students Using an Experiential Learning Approach with an Emphasis on Reflection. Sustainability 2019, 11, 4992 .
AMA StyleTina Beranič, Marjan Heričko. Introducing ERP Concepts to IT Students Using an Experiential Learning Approach with an Emphasis on Reflection. Sustainability. 2019; 11 (18):4992.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTina Beranič; Marjan Heričko. 2019. "Introducing ERP Concepts to IT Students Using an Experiential Learning Approach with an Emphasis on Reflection." Sustainability 11, no. 18: 4992.
Mitja Gradišnik; Tina Beranič; Sašo Karakatič. Implementacija programskih rešitev s pomočjo inteligentnih asistentov. OTS 2019 Sodobne informacijske tehnologije in storitve: Zbornik štiriindvajsete konference, Maribor, 18. in 19. junij 2019 2019, 1 .
AMA StyleMitja Gradišnik, Tina Beranič, Sašo Karakatič. Implementacija programskih rešitev s pomočjo inteligentnih asistentov. OTS 2019 Sodobne informacijske tehnologije in storitve: Zbornik štiriindvajsete konference, Maribor, 18. in 19. junij 2019. 2019; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMitja Gradišnik; Tina Beranič; Sašo Karakatič. 2019. "Implementacija programskih rešitev s pomočjo inteligentnih asistentov." OTS 2019 Sodobne informacijske tehnologije in storitve: Zbornik štiriindvajsete konference, Maribor, 18. in 19. junij 2019 , no. : 1.
Different challenges arise while detecting deficient software source code. Usually a large number of potentially problematic entities are identified when an individual software metric or individual quality aspect is used for the identification of deficient program entities. Additionally, a lot of these entities quite often turn out to be false positives, i.e., the metrics indicate poor quality whereas experienced developers do not consider program entities as problematic. The number of entities identified as potentially deficient does not decrease significantly when the identification of deficient entities is carried out by applying code smell detection rules. Moreover, the intersection of entities identified as allegedly deficient among different code smell detection tools is small, which suggests that the implementation of code smell detection rules are not consistent and uniform. To address these challenges, we present a novel approach for identifying deficient entities that is based on applying the majority function on the combination of software metrics. Program entities are assessed according to selected quality aspects that are evaluated with a set of software metrics and corresponding threshold values derived from benchmark data, considering the statistical distributions of software metrics values. The proposed approach was implemented and validated on projects developed in Java, C++ and C#. The validation of the proposed approach was done with expert judgment, where software developers and architects with multiple years of experiences assessed the quality of the software classes. Using a combination of software metrics as the criteria for the identification of deficient source code, the number of potentially deficient object-oriented program entities proved to be reduced. The results show the correctness of quality ratings determined by the proposed identification approach, and most importantly, confirm the absence of false positive entities.
Tina Beranič; Vili Podgorelec; Marjan Heričko. Towards a Reliable Identification of Deficient Code with a Combination of Software Metrics. Applied Sciences 2018, 8, 1902 .
AMA StyleTina Beranič, Vili Podgorelec, Marjan Heričko. Towards a Reliable Identification of Deficient Code with a Combination of Software Metrics. Applied Sciences. 2018; 8 (10):1902.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTina Beranič; Vili Podgorelec; Marjan Heričko. 2018. "Towards a Reliable Identification of Deficient Code with a Combination of Software Metrics." Applied Sciences 8, no. 10: 1902.
Enterprise Resource Planning systems are immense environments that are quite hard for novice users to grasp. A new user will judge an unknown system heavily by its usability. This makes it crucial that the introduction of a system portrays the system as being as usable as possible. We used a gamified workshop based on the ERPsim simulation game to introduce students to the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning solution, and then measured the perceived System Usability Scale (SUS) of SAP and its modules. We then compared the usability results with other comparable studies and found them to be higher, which is correlated with the positive effect of gamification that the workshop left on its participants. The results need to be confirmed further, because the preliminary study employs several limitations on the sample size, demographics and different versions of the SAP ERP software used in comparable studies.
Alen Rajšp; Paul Wu Horng-Jyh; Tina Beranič; Marjan Heričko. Impact of an Introductory ERP Simulation Game on the Students’ Perception of SAP Usability. Communications in Computer and Information Science 2018, 48 -58.
AMA StyleAlen Rajšp, Paul Wu Horng-Jyh, Tina Beranič, Marjan Heričko. Impact of an Introductory ERP Simulation Game on the Students’ Perception of SAP Usability. Communications in Computer and Information Science. 2018; ():48-58.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAlen Rajšp; Paul Wu Horng-Jyh; Tina Beranič; Marjan Heričko. 2018. "Impact of an Introductory ERP Simulation Game on the Students’ Perception of SAP Usability." Communications in Computer and Information Science , no. : 48-58.
Horng-Jyh Paul Wu; See Tiong Beng; Marjan Heričko; Tina Beranič; Lorna Uden; I-Hsien Ting; Wei Lu. Knowledge Creation Activity System for Learning ERP Concepts Through Simulation Game. Communications in Computer and Information Science 2017, 133 -143.
AMA StyleHorng-Jyh Paul Wu, See Tiong Beng, Marjan Heričko, Tina Beranič, Lorna Uden, I-Hsien Ting, Wei Lu. Knowledge Creation Activity System for Learning ERP Concepts Through Simulation Game. Communications in Computer and Information Science. 2017; ():133-143.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHorng-Jyh Paul Wu; See Tiong Beng; Marjan Heričko; Tina Beranič; Lorna Uden; I-Hsien Ting; Wei Lu. 2017. "Knowledge Creation Activity System for Learning ERP Concepts Through Simulation Game." Communications in Computer and Information Science , no. : 133-143.
Marjan Heričko; Alen Rajšp; Paul Wu Horng-Jyh; Tina Beranič; Lorna Uden; I-Hsien Ting; Wei Lu. Using a Simulation Game Approach to Introduce ERP Concepts – A Case Study. Communications in Computer and Information Science 2017, 731, 119 -132.
AMA StyleMarjan Heričko, Alen Rajšp, Paul Wu Horng-Jyh, Tina Beranič, Lorna Uden, I-Hsien Ting, Wei Lu. Using a Simulation Game Approach to Introduce ERP Concepts – A Case Study. Communications in Computer and Information Science. 2017; 731 ():119-132.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarjan Heričko; Alen Rajšp; Paul Wu Horng-Jyh; Tina Beranič; Lorna Uden; I-Hsien Ting; Wei Lu. 2017. "Using a Simulation Game Approach to Introduce ERP Concepts – A Case Study." Communications in Computer and Information Science 731, no. : 119-132.