Evaluation

 

 

The evaluation of DEPTHS was conducted in February 2009, in the context of a course on software development taught at the Department of Computer Science of Military Academy in Belgrade, Serbia, with a group of 13 students of the fifth year of the computer science program. The students were divided into 4 groups (3 groups with 3 students and 1 group with 4 students), based on the teacher’s subjective opinion about their knowledge and their grades in courses related to SE.
The aim of the evaluation was to determine how effective DEPTHS is for learning DPs. Specifically, we wanted to check if active students involvement in real world problems and the employment of context-aware educational services could ensure more effective way of imparting knowledge in the domain of software development.
We used an interview to collect data about the students’ satisfaction with and attitudes towards learning with the DEPTHS system, as well as their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of learning with DEPTHS. The DEPTHS system received high marks from the students. Majority of them (53.85%) reported they have learned as effectively as in traditional way, and 30.77% reported that they have learned more than in traditional way. The students reported it was intuitive and very easy to use (76.92%), but they also have reported some technical issues caused by a software bug in the software modeling tool. The students felt educational services provided in DEPTHS are very helpful: Web resource recommendation – 92.30%; course content recommendation – 84.61%; and peers recommendation – 76.92%. They also thought that the activities provided within the tasks considerably contribute to the learning process (brainstorming – 76.92%, and evaluating each other’s works – 100%).