The Third International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education and Training (REET'08)

In conjunction with the 16th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE’08).

http://re.cti.depaul.edu/REET08/

PAPERS DUE ON JULY 4th

Effective Requirements Engineering (RE) is increasingly recognized as a critical component in the success of a software development project. This has led to a growing identification of the importance of incorporating significant RE components into the curriculum of university degrees in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology and other related areas. Furthermore many industrial organizations are recognizing the need to develop RE related training programs as part of their ongoing process improvement initiatives.

Following the success of the first and second International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education and Training (REET 2005 and 2007), this workshop will address issues related to RE education, both as part of a formal university degree and as ongoing skills training within the workplace. The workshop is intended to go much deeper than a surface discussion of curriculum issues and will examine specific ideas and techniques for teaching skills needed by an effective requirements engineer.

In addition to topics related to curriculum development, creative contributions related to pedagogical techniques for teaching RE skills are strongly encouraged. These skills include requirements elicitation, modeling, analysis, conflict negotiation, consensus building, and requirements specification writing and reviewing skills. Submissions could take the form of experience reports or demonstrations of specific teaching techniques and training materials.

Workshop Themes:
Curriculum design
  * Curriculum for undergraduate and graduate level RE studies.
  * Mapping RE elements from the SWEBOK (Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge) to RE curricula.
  * Identifying and incorporating specific RE related topics into the general curriculum and/or software engineering courses.
  * Curriculum for industrial training programs.

 Techniques for teaching specific RE related skills
  * Creative methods for teaching stakeholder identification, requirements elicitation, negotiation and consensus building, requirements writing, and other critical RE skills.
  * Specific tools, exercises, and assignments developed to support RE skills training.

 Effective pedagogical methods for teaching RE skills
  * Survey results related to topics such as the effectiveness of teaching methods, RE skills needed to be effective in industry, skill mismatches between graduating students and industry needs etc.
  * Studies into the effectiveness of requirements engineering educational practices.
  * Experience reports including industrial training and university level curriculum.

Primary objectives:
1. Identify core RE skills that should be incorporated into the curriculum at various levels and to outline feasible RE curricular.
2. Exchange ideas on techniques, exercises, and tools for teaching specific RE related skills.
3. Improve understanding of effective RE teaching practices.
4. Initiate a publicly accessible depository of sharable RE educational resources.

Targeted Attendees:
* Educators currently teaching or planning on teaching RE courses,
* Academics intending to integrate RE content into existing more generalized courses.
* Practitioners interested in developing or improving RE training in the work place.

Workshop Paper Format:

Position papers (3-5 pages):
Short papers will state the position of the author(s) on any of the topics within the scope of the workshop. For example, positions papers could describe experiences with a particular method for teaching an RE related skill, or could describe an innovative approach to incorporating RE education into the degree curriculum. Position papers will be evaluated based on their potential for generating discussion, and on the originality of the positions expressed.

Full papers (8-10 pages):
Full papers will describe requirements engineering educational techniques, survey results, or experiential reports. For example, a full paper might describe a specific technique for teaching an RE skill and include a case study describing its implementation and evaluation of its effectiveness as well as lessons learnt. As another example, a full paper might describe a mature tool for supporting RE training.

Requirements Teaching or Training Activity:
Pedagogical papers will describe a teaching activity and provide all of the materials needed to reproduce that activity in the classroom. Authors of full and position papers, plus anyone else interested in attending the workshop are encouraged to submit an RE activity. RE activities will be documented using a predefined format (available from http://re.cs.depaul.edu/REET08), and will focus on one or more RE skill, define target audience and learning goals, provide step-by-step guidelines for conducting the activity, include student hand-outs or associated slides, describe the context of the activity, and briefly comment on its prior use in the classroom. These activities will be posted onto a wiki and made publicly available following RE’08.

Workshop format:
The format of REET’08 will be an interactive one focusing on practical ideas and approaches for teaching RE skills and for constructing effective RE curricular. Paper presentations will be used to foster discussion. Demonstrations of specific teaching techniques and materials will be encouraged. The workshop will conclude with break-out groups working on specific topics such as the initiative for sharing RE resources or discussing RE curriculum and developing appropriate templates.

Important Dates:
Full papers and position papers due 4th July, 2008
Author notification                     28th July,2008
Camera ready papers due                 8th September, 2008
REET Workshop                           9th September, 2008

Workshop co-chairs:
Didar Zowghi              [email protected]
Jane Cleland-Huang        [email protected]
Joy Beatty                [email protected]

Co-sponsored by the RESG: Coordinator Will Heaven

Program Committee:
Ban Al-Ani           University of California, Irvine, USA
Ian Alexander        Scenario Plus Ltd., UK
Dan Berry            University of Waterloo, Canada
Ljerka Beus-Dukic    University of Westminster, UK
Jacob Cybulski       Deakin University, Australia
Al Davis             University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA
Don Gause            Binghamton University, USA
Vincenzo Gervasi     University of Pisa, Italy
Martin Glinz         University of Zurich, Switzerland
Colin Hood      HOOD Group, UK
Olly Gotel           Pace University, New York City, USA
Igor Hawryszkiewycz  University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Soren Lauesen        University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Lemai Nguyen         Deakin University, Australia
David Randall       Requirementeering Ltd, Sydney, Australia
Lucia Rapanotti      Open University, UK
Roel Wieringa        University of Twente, Netherlands
Yijun Yu             Open University, UK