-Cardiff University has developed a new software engineering degree that is influenced by, and works directly with, industry. Through this degree scheme, dedicated staff members have been used to interact with and source industrial partners. From these interactions, new research opportunities have been identified and one has been funded.
This work is licensed under a CC-BY-4.0 license. by the latest research and the tools used to be informed by industrial partners.
Students understand version control as soon as they are introduced to programming on the course, building on that knowledge as the degree progresses to deal with merging multiple versions of a project and ensuring the integrity of a repository by ignoring configuration files and not embedding passwords directly into their code. As with any project, it is not simply about writing code that works for a single use case and, very early on in the course, students are introduced to many different forms of testing and taught how to use popular industrial tools to automate the building, testing and deploying of their projects. These tools do not just benefit their learning and prepare them better for work but enables marking of work to be automated.
Industrial partners need only commit their ideas and time in order to have the students create a project for them, but companies have also been involved with presenting to students about the technology they use, skills they are looking for and some have simply provided an overview of their career and experiences thus far. The course is reviewed regularly and each module is updated to keep up to date with the tools most commonly used in industry and this review does not simply involve members of the academic team but industrial partners provide their input as to skills/tools that they believe are crucial for new graduates and, providing that these suggestions are supported by a majority, those changes are implemented for the next iteration of the module. This means that students do not simply learn about fundamental computer science or software engineering concepts but also cover areas such as DevOps and security.
Summer placements allow students to try different work
opportunities, either in industry or in research. These
placements are available for ever year, as opposed to a year in
industry only being available to those between second and
third year, this allows students to try research based placements
one summer or even two different streams of industry-based
work, such as: security and mobile development. The students
can then bring their industrial skills to their placements and
feed back what they are taught in their placement, through
the group work in their modules. For example, Git is taught
as a version control system (VCS) to students but they may
be exposed to a particular methodology of using Git (i.e. Git
Flow [
Further details on the pedagogic focus of the course, teaching methods and collaborative learning processes will be presented at the 7th Annual International Conference on Computer Science Education: Innovation & Technology (CSEIT 2016).
Since the Applied Software Engineering degree started, more than sixty companies have met with academic staff to discuss providing and supervising projects, giving talks and assisting with practical sessions. Of those sixty, six have provided student projects, ranging from a simple tracking website to a mobile application that utilises indoor localisation and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices. Some of the projects that were pitched by potential industrial partners were far beyond the scope of first year undergraduate students and one such project was related to current research interests within the School.
The example used in this paper is with the newly-formed cyber-crime unit within the Dyfed-Powys Police force. A student project was proposed that would, given some personal information, identify the social media accounts of an individual. The initial belief was that the project would be trivial and primarily require building a Web-based dashboard. To investigate criminal activity, the tool could identify suspicious activity, such as each account reporting a different age or regularly adding underage children as friends. For victims, it could be used to prove claims of cyber-bullying or warn potential victims of adults posing as users within their age group.
Existing research has shown that identifying users across
multiple social media sites is not a simple task and there are
multiple methods for doing so [
The research interest of this was quickly identified and funding for an initial proof of concept was provided by Cardiff University, through the Cardiff University Research Opportunities Program (CUROP). CUROP provides funding for Cardiff University undergraduates to undertake 4–8 weeks of supervised research work during the summer. Dyfed-Powys cyber-crime unit agreed to assist with the supervision of a staff and student project over a two month period in the summer of 2016.
Because of the industrial links with this project, it is not simply a case of implementing a proof of concept and publishing findings. The tool that is created is intended to be developed further and used regularly. Using the industrial best practices taught in the ASE degree scheme, the tool needs to be modular, tested and well-documented. While this is a research project first and foremost, the industrial link and real-world application of the intended outcome requires that practices are used so that the software is sustainable beyond the scope of the initial project. If the findings of the project prove to be positive, we hope to be able to use similar funding opportunities to explore more industrial research partnerships.
We hope to continue to cultivate these new industrial links and to develop research ties that benefit both industry and academia. The key point to note here is that the client was unaware of any research relevance within their proposed project and were merely looking for implementation, being able to initiate these links with the University allowed industry to utilise research expertise within the School of CS&I.
The School previously found its industrial partners through research ties within the School, social ties of academic staff or connections made at events. ASE has a dedicated team of staff tasked with industrial outreach and engagement that makes the School of CS&I much more accessible to industry and also allows the University to develop a network with both local and national companies. These ties with industry allow new research collaborations, as well as allowing students to apply skills to real-world projects and follow sustainable practices, such as version control, testing and managing deployment.
However, there are drawbacks with this approach in that sourcing and establishing new ties in industry is often time consuming. On top of this, the staff members must have a highlevel overview of all of the existing research projects, links and skills within the School. This could be assisted with the implementation of a directory of active projects and existing collaborations with industry.
After one year of existence, the industrial outreach of the Applied Software Engineering degree has allowed the School of CS&I to meet with over sixty companies and receive funding for a research project with the Cyber-crime unit of Dyfed-Powys police. We believe that these opportunities will only grow as our network grows to further research collaboration. Fig. 3. Students presenting and handing over to an industrial client