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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1686/WSSSPE4_paper_1.pdf
Demo: Using Industrial Engagement to Create and
Develop Research Ties within Academia
Dr. Christopher Gwilliams
School of Computer Science & Informatics
Cardiff University
Abstract—Cardiff University has developed a new software by the latest research and the tools used to be informed by
engineering degree that is influenced by, and works directly with, industrial partners.
industry. Through this degree scheme, dedicated staff members Students understand version control as soon as they are
have been used to interact with and source industrial partners.
From these interactions, new research opportunities have been introduced to programming on the course, building on that
identified and one has been funded. knowledge as the degree progresses to deal with merging
Cardiff University introduced a new industry-focused de- multiple versions of a project and ensuring the integrity of a
gree, BSc Applied Software Engineering (ASE) in September repository by ignoring configuration files and not embedding
2015. The course aims to address the digital skills gap [2] and passwords directly into their code. As with any project, it is
provide students with skills, knowledge and experience to be not simply about writing code that works for a single use case
effective work-ready software engineers. and, very early on in the course, students are introduced to
The course provides three key benefits: the first is that many different forms of testing and taught how to use popular
engagement with industry allows students to learn through live industrial tools to automate the building, testing and deploying
projects with real-world applications; the second is that the of their projects. These tools do not just benefit their learning
course provides an entry point for industry to engage with the and prepare them better for work but enables marking of work
university, making collaboration with the School of Computer to be automated.
Science more accessible and developing a network of contacts Industrial partners need only commit their ideas and time
that connects industrial partners with Cardiff University, as in order to have the students create a project for them, but
well as each other. Thirdly, these collaborations do not simply companies have also been involved with presenting to students
provide projects and employment opportunities for students, about the technology they use, skills they are looking for and
but they allow the School of Computer Science & Informatics some have simply provided an overview of their career and
(CS&I) to identify potential opportunities for new research experiences thus far. The course is reviewed regularly and each
projects and collaborators. module is updated to keep up to date with the tools most
commonly used in industry and this review does not simply
This paper details an example of an industrial collaboration
involve members of the academic team but industrial partners
that has resulted in initial funding for a research project.
provide their input as to skills/tools that they believe are crucial
The first benefit detailed is allowing students to learn for new graduates and, providing that these suggestions are
through live projects. While their career path is not fixed supported by a majority, those changes are implemented for the
to research software engineers, this allows them to gain a next iteration of the module. This means that students do not
mix of both academia and industrial experience. Projects in simply learn about fundamental computer science or software
the past have been provided by Cardiff University, hardware engineering concepts but also cover areas such as DevOps and
manufacturers and local government. security.
The projects are taught using the Agile development cy- Summer placements allow students to try different work
cle [4] and encourages ‘learning through practice’, teaching opportunities, either in industry or in research. These place-
students large concepts in small chunks and giving them ments are available for ever year, as opposed to a year in
the opportunity to implement using a step by step process. industry only being available to those between second and
When enough concepts have been taught to give students a third year, this allows students to try research based placements
foundation knowledge, a live project is introduced and students one summer or even two different streams of industry-based
must gather requirements from the client, work in 2 week work, such as: security and mobile development. The students
‘sprints’ and hand over a finished project at the end of the can then bring their industrial skills to their placements and
semester. These projects range from a simple web site and feed back what they are taught in their placement, through
server that runs for half a semester to an enterprise project the group work in their modules. For example, Git is taught
that runs for a full academic year. Not only does this method as a version control system (VCS) to students but they may
encourage teamwork and give exposure to some leading tools, be exposed to a particular methodology of using Git (i.e. Git
the Agile approach allows the course content to be informed Flow [1]) that they can encourage the team to use in the
This work is licensed under a CC-BY-4.0 license. next academic year; this means that learning is not limited
to just the lecturer-student relationship but it is more of a we hope to be able to use similar funding opportunities to
collaborative effort. explore more industrial research partnerships.
Further details on the pedagogic focus of the course, We hope to continue to cultivate these new industrial links
teaching methods and collaborative learning processes will be and to develop research ties that benefit both industry and
presented at the 7th Annual International Conference on Com- academia. The key point to note here is that the client was
puter Science Education: Innovation & Technology (CSEIT unaware of any research relevance within their proposed
2016). project and were merely looking for implementation, being
Since the Applied Software Engineering degree started, able to initiate these links with the University allowed industry
more than sixty companies have met with academic staff to to utilise research expertise within the School of CS&I.
discuss providing and supervising projects, giving talks and The School previously found its industrial partners through
assisting with practical sessions. Of those sixty, six have pro- research ties within the School, social ties of academic staff or
vided student projects, ranging from a simple tracking website connections made at events. ASE has a dedicated team of staff
to a mobile application that utilises indoor localisation and tasked with industrial outreach and engagement that makes the
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices. Some of the projects School of CS&I much more accessible to industry and also
that were pitched by potential industrial partners were far allows the University to develop a network with both local
beyond the scope of first year undergraduate students and one and national companies. These ties with industry allow new
such project was related to current research interests within research collaborations, as well as allowing students to apply
the School. skills to real-world projects and follow sustainable practices,
The example used in this paper is with the newly-formed such as version control, testing and managing deployment.
cyber-crime unit within the Dyfed-Powys Police force. A However, there are drawbacks with this approach in that
student project was proposed that would, given some personal sourcing and establishing new ties in industry is often time
information, identify the social media accounts of an individ- consuming. On top of this, the staff members must have a high-
ual. The initial belief was that the project would be trivial level overview of all of the existing research projects, links
and primarily require building a Web-based dashboard. To and skills within the School. This could be assisted with the
investigate criminal activity, the tool could identify suspicious implementation of a directory of active projects and existing
activity, such as each account reporting a different age or collaborations with industry.
regularly adding underage children as friends. For victims, After one year of existence, the industrial outreach of the
it could be used to prove claims of cyber-bullying or warn Applied Software Engineering degree has allowed the School
potential victims of adults posing as users within their age of CS&I to meet with over sixty companies and receive
group. funding for a research project with the Cyber-crime unit
Existing research has shown that identifying users across of Dyfed-Powys police. We believe that these opportunities
multiple social media sites is not a simple task and there are will only grow as our network grows to further research
multiple methods for doing so [3]. Some involve the matching collaboration.
of usernames across sites [5], others involve identifying be-
R EFERENCES
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funding for an initial proof of concept was provided by Simon Caton, Jens-Erik Mai, and Markus Strohmaier. Following user
pathways: Cross platform and mixed methods analysis in social media
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[4] Robert Cecil Martin. Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns,
of supervised research work during the summer. Dyfed-Powys and Practices, volume 1. 2003.
cyber-crime unit agreed to assist with the supervision of a staff [5] Reza Zafarani and Huan Liu. Connecting corresponding identities across
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[6] Reza Zafarani and Huan Liu. Connecting users across social media sites: a
of 2016. behavioral-modeling approach. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGKDD
Because of the industrial links with this project, it is international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, pages
not simply a case of implementing a proof of concept and 41–49. ACM, 2013.
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,
A PPENDIX
Fig. 1. Students meeting with an industrial client
Fig. 2. Students working in teams on client projects
Fig. 3. Students presenting and handing over to an industrial client