=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3672/EuT-paper1
|storemode=property
|title=Integrating the Sustainability Awareness Framework in Undergraduate Software Engineering Education
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3672/EuT-paper1.pdf
|volume=Vol-3672
|authors=Peter Bambazek,Iris Groher
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/refsq/BambazekG24
}}
==Integrating the Sustainability Awareness Framework in Undergraduate Software Engineering Education==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3672/EuT-paper1.pdf
Integrating the Sustainability Awareness Framework
in Undergraduate Software Engineering Education
Peter Bambazek1,*,† , Iris Groher1,†
1
Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Linz, Austria
Abstract
[Context and motivation] In recent years, sustainability has emerged as an important concern in re-
quirements engineering. The Sustainability Awareness Framework, the leading approach in this area,
offers practical support for practitioners to identify the potential sustainability impacts of software
systems. [Question/problem] Despite its relevance, a critical question remains unanswered: how can we
effectively enhance sustainability awareness among students and integrate it into software engineering
education? [Principal ideas/results] In this paper, we present early results of an ongoing undergraduate
practical software engineering course in which we integrated the Sustainability Awareness Framework.
We report on how students performed in identifying sustainability effects of a new software system for a
hypothetical company. [Contribution] Our primary contribution is a proposal on how the Sustainability
Awareness Framework can be integrated in university-level courses. Moreover, our findings reveal that
students, even without prior related knowledge, can identify significant sustainability aspects, supporting
the framework’s educational value and accessibility.
Keywords
Sustainability, Requirements Engineering, Sustainability Awareness Framework, Higher Education
1. Introduction
In recent years, several approaches have been proposed in the field of requirements engineering
that promote the development of sustainable software systems [1, 2, 3, 4]. Among these, the
Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF, cf. Figure 1) [5, 6] has emerged as a prominent
approach, as highlighted in a previously conducted mapping study [7].
SusAF is distinguished by its practical orientation, providing a structured guide for facilitating
workshops with stakeholders, including a set of instructions and questions to guide in-depth
discussions on the sustainability implications of software systems. The primary goal of the
framework is to raise awareness of the potential effects of software systems, which is also in
line with the principle of "Good Digital Design is sustainable and creates sustainability" as stated
by IREB [9].
In: D. Mendez, A. Moreira, J. Horkoff, T. Weyer, M. Daneva, M. Unterkalmsteiner, S. Bühne, J. Hehn, B. Penzenstadler, N.
Condori-Fernández, O. Dieste, R. Guizzardi, K. M. Habibullah, A. Perini, A. Susi, S. Abualhaija, C. Arora, D. Dell’Anna, A.
Ferrari, S. Ghanavati, F. Dalpiaz, J. Steghöfer, A. Rachmann, J. Gulden, A. Müller, M. Beck, D. Birkmeier, A. Herrmann,
P. Mennig, K. Schneider. Joint Proceedings of REFSQ-2024 Workshops, Doctoral Symposium, Posters & Tools Track, and
Education and Training Track. Co-located with REFSQ 2024. Winterthur, Switzerland, April 8, 2024.
*
Corresponding author.
†
These authors contributed equally.
$ peter.bambazek@gmail.com (P. Bambazek); iris.groher@jku.at (I. Groher)
0000-0002-4447-3083 (P. Bambazek); 0000-0003-0905-6791 (I. Groher)
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
The Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) presents a guideline to carry out workshops
with stakeholders, and a set of instructions and questions to guide discussions on the
sustainability effects of software systems.
Sustainability Dimensions. The guidance questions to identify potential effects cover the
following sustainability dimensions and related topics:
• Social: e.g. sense of community, trust, diversity, equity, communication
• Individual: e.g. health, lifelong learning, privacy, safety, agency
• Environmental: e.g. resources, pollution, energy, biodiversity, land use
• Economic: e.g. value, customer relationship, supply chain, governance, innovation
• Technical: e.g. maintainability, usability, adaptability, security, scalability
Orders of Effects. Each dimension is further divided into three orders of effects to indicate the
degree of each identified effect:
• Immediate: caused by the direct function of the system or its development
• Enabling: arising from the application of a system over time
• Structural: referring to persistent changes that can be observed at the macro level
Figure 1: Overview of the Sustainability Awareness Framework [5, 8]
So far, SusAF has been evaluated in educational contexts and in several industrial case
studies [10, 11, 12]. To date, over 200 students have engaged with SusAF [12]. Penzenstadler
et al. assessed the sustainability analysis diagram, a component of SusAF, with 20 students
across five teams, receiving positive feedback on its suitability and usefulness [13]. Duboc et al.
explored SusAF’s feasibility with 47 computer science students, demonstrating its effectiveness in
fostering discussions on sustainability and its accessibility to students without prior knowledge
[5]. Furthermore, Penzenstadler et al. reported on SusAF’s application during a summer
school in Uganda, involving 30 participants. This evaluation confirmed SusAF’s simplicity and
effectiveness in raising awareness about the sustainability impacts of software systems within
an educational setting [14]. A comprehensive and recent literature review on sustainability in
computing education was conducted by Peters et al. [15] in 2024. Their work examines the
integration and exploration of sustainability concepts in computing education, focusing on
different perspectives and applications related to sustainability, computing, and educational
methodologies.
However, our research is different from existing studies in its focus, as it is the first attempt to
embed SusAF comprehensively within a software engineering course structure. We present our
approach to incorporating SusAF into a Business Informatics Bachelor’s course at the Johannes
Kepler University Linz (JKU). This includes an outline of the implementation strategies and
pedagogical methods employed. Additionally, we present preliminary findings from this study,
with a particular focus on the effectiveness of SusAF in enhancing student awareness regarding
the potential sustainability impacts of software systems.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the setting of the
course. The findings from our ongoing research are detailed in Section 3, followed by an in-
depth discussion in Section 4 and a summary of identified limitations in Section 5. The paper
concludes with Section 6, where we summarize our key insights and propose directions for
future research.
2. Course Setting
The course, mandatory in the fourth semester of the Bachelor’s program in Business Informatics,
carries 6 ECTS and focuses on practical aspects of software engineering. Students are grouped
into teams of three, working collaboratively on a hypothetical software application project.
This semester, the project’s objective was to develop a digital logbook application for manag-
ing trips. The application’s core functionalities include the ability to create, edit, and delete trip
entries. Additionally, it includes features for sorting, filtering, and analyzing the list of trips.
Moreover, the application is designed to support both local and cloud-based backup options for
trip data. In the current semester, 15 students grouped into 5 teams attended the course.
The developmental process was divided into three sprints, encompassing a total of 20 user
stories. This structure not only provided a realistic software development experience but also
facilitated the application of agile methodologies in a controlled educational setting. The course’s
design aims to equip students with practical skills in software development, team collaboration,
and agile project management. During the sprints, students concentrate on various key areas
including object-oriented design, implementation, testing methodologies, user interface design,
analysis of code quality, and comprehensive documentation.
The course timeline and the associated tasks focusing on sustainability are detailed in Table 1.
This paper specifically discusses the outcomes of the first three sustainability tasks (T 1-3).
Table 1
Timeline of the Practical Software Engineering Course
ID Tasks Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb.
T1 Sustainability Literature
T2 SusAF Workshop
T3 Survey #1
T4 Analysis of User Stories
T5 Survey #2
T6 Design
T7 Development and Test
T8 Quality and Documentation
In the initial task (T1), we equipped students with a selection of relevant literature [5, 16, 8, 17]
to introduce them to the topic of sustainability. This step aimed to provide a theoretical
background for their practical work. Subsequently, for T2, students were presented with a
comprehensive scenario involving a fictional company, a detailed description of the proposed
software solution, and a suite of 20 user stories. Utilizing this information, they were tasked
with conducting a SusAF workshop. The primary objective here was to identify potential
sustainability impacts associated with the software system. Following this, an online survey
(T3) was conducted, aimed at gathering feedback on the application of SusAF and to acquire
additional insights. In T4, we directed the students to further analyze the provided user stories.
Their task was to document how these stories either aligned with the previously identified
sustainability effects or unveiled new sustainability aspects. Thereafter, in T5, a second online
survey was conducted to evaluate how students’ perceptions of sustainability evolved over the
course of the semester. Tasks T6 through T8, which are associated with the development process
of the software system, were conducted concurrently with the sustainability-oriented tasks T1
to T5. In the first month (T6), students focused on creating a basic design for their software,
encompassing architecture, UI/UX considerations, etc. The main portion of the semester (T7) was
then devoted to the actual software development. Finally, T8 required students to concentrate
on code quality analysis and the documentation of their software project at the semester’s end.
3. Results
In the conducted SusAF workshops, the five teams together identified 97 sustainability effects
(including duplicates). On average, each team recognized approximately 19.4 effects, with a
variation ranging from a minimum of 16 to a maximum of 24 effects across the teams. The
majority of these effects, accounting for nearly two-thirds (60 effects), were classified as positive.
Approximately one-third (34 effects) were deemed negative. Additionally, there were three
effects for which the impact was determined to be dependent on user behavior, potentially
being either positive or negative. An aggregation of the identified effects, noting that several
effects were recognized by more than one team, reveals a total of 52 different effects: economic
(11), environmental (8), social (7), individual (12), and technical (14).
The voting scale of the survey was defined from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Table 2 illustrates the outcomes of specific questions or statements from the initial online survey
that students completed following their SusAF workshops. The survey employed a rating scale
ranging from 1, signifying strong disagreement, to 5, indicating strong agreement.
Table 2
Example questions/statements of first survey
Question/Statement Median Modal (Min,Max)
The division of sustainability into 5 dimensions is understand- 4,00 5,00 (1,5)
able.
We identified more potential impacts of the software system 4,00 5,00 (1,5)
across the various sustainability dimensions than I expected.
Discussing potential sustainability aspects of the software sys- 4,00 4,00 (1,5)
tem in the team helped to better understand the product vision
of the system.
Potential impacts on the sustainability of a software system 5,00 5,00 (3,5)
should be taken into account as early as possible in software
development.
Discussing sustainability aspects of software systems corre- 4,00 4,00 (3,5)
sponds to my expectations of studying business informatics.
“The sustainability tasks provided me with a novel perspective on software projects, which I
didn’t have before.”
“Initially, my understanding of sustainability was limited to its environmental aspect. However,
learning about the existence of additional dimensions and the impact a system can have on
these dimensions was interesting.”
“Through this course I learned that sustainability is more than just ecological concerns and I
will try to integrate this understanding into my daily work.”
“It became increasingly fascinating to identify the links between sustainability dimensions and
our user stories. This offered not only theoretical insights, but also positively influenced the
technical development of our project. Taking sustainability aspects into account helped us to
focus our work more precisely also with an awareness of their long-term effects.”
Figure 2: Statements from course participants
Detailed results including the course documents can be accessed in the corresponding online
repository1 .
Throughout the course, we gathered student feedback and received exclusively positive
reactions from seven participants regarding the sustainability tasks. As illustrated in Figure 2,
the student comments highlight not only an enhanced understanding of the different aspects of
sustainability but also recognize the benefits of these insights beyond the course.
4. Discussion
The most noteworthy aspect is the comprehensive outcomes provided by the student teams.
Each team identified potential sustainability effects across all dimensions. The results highlight
a diverse set of sustainability issues and illustrate how the adoption of a new software system
can impact a company’s overarching sustainability objectives. Notably, the students reported
a predominance of positive effects over negative ones. This trend aligns with findings from a
prior case study we conducted involving practitioners, as detailed in [10].
Secondly, it’s important to note that the student teams engaged with the SusAF workbook
without significant prior knowledge. We made relevant literature available for self-study
but did not offer any explicit introduction regarding the definition of sustainability, its five
dimensions, or the specifics of SusAF. In the initial survey, a majority of the students reported
lacking professional experience in software engineering and having not previously addressed
sustainability aspects within this field. Given this context, the results achieved through the
application of SusAF are particularly encouraging.
Thirdly, we received very positive feedback from the students regarding the implementation of
sustainability in the software project course. As depicted in Table 2, the students acknowledged
1
https://github.com/peter1123581321/jku-win-se-2023, created and last accessed March 2024
that the integration of sustainability discussions aligns well with their expectations of a business
informatics program. They agreed that the impacts of sustainability in software systems should
be explored as early as possible. Moreover, engaging in discussions about sustainability effects
was seen to enhance their comprehension of the product vision for the system. The students
also agreed that they were able to identify a greater number of sustainability impacts than they
initially anticipated.
Fourthly, a notable aspect of the project was the voluntary contributions made by some
student teams. Three teams went beyond the required scope, providing additional insights
into their comprehension of sustainability and the product vision for the software system.
Remarkably, one team proposed an innovative feature for the system: a feedback mechanism in
the driver’s logbook that informs users about the CO2 emissions associated with their driving
style.
In summary, the outcomes and student feedback from this exercise are highly encouraging,
providing strong motivation to replicate and refine the integration of sustainability concerns in
future iterations of this course and other courses of the study program.
5. Limitations
Our study is subject to a number of limitations. Firstly, the student sample represents a conve-
nient sample, indicating that the study participants were not selected based on any demographic
criteria.
Secondly, the sample size is relatively small. Only five student teams participated in the study
and an evaluation involving additional teams would thus be desirable. Also, each team consisted
of only three students. Therefore, we do not know how larger teams would have performed.
Thirdly, the fictional company and its demand for a digital driver’s logbook was carefully
selected, as the user stories imply some obvious sustainability effects, especially with respect
to the ecological dimension (e.g. CO2 emissions) and the individual dimension (e.g. privacy).
Consequently, the number of identified sustainability effects is likely influenced by the product
vision of the envisioned software system.
Lastly, the potential for collusive behavior among the teams and the extent to which they
may have influenced each other remains unknown.
6. Conclusion and Future Work
This paper shares preliminary findings from a study where students are tasked with identifying
potential sustainability impacts of a fictional software system they develop in a software project
course. The feedback has been predominantly positive, supporting the value of concentrating
on sustainability in both educational and research contexts. Accordingly, we aim to inspire
fellow academics to explore the integration of sustainability into their pedagogical methods.
Our long term goal is to design and evaluate a comprehensive curriculum that integrates
sustainability concepts into various stages of business informatics and computer science educa-
tion. This involves developing new courses or modules specifically focused on sustainability in
software engineering.
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