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About

About

I'm an Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP), lecturing courses on Software Engineering, Agile Software Development and Software Architecture (frameworks and patterns). I'm a researcher at the Software Engineering Research Group at FEUP, conducting work aimed at collaborative software knowledge management and software engineering education, and a senior investigator at INESC TEC and member of the international Hillside Group. My PhD thesis on Software Engineering was entitled “Patterns and Tools for improving Framework Understanding: a Collaborative Approach”. My most recent research interests are applying game-like techniques to improve software engineering education.

Interest
Topics
Details

Details

  • Name

    Nuno Flores
  • Role

    Senior Researcher
  • Since

    25th March 1998
001
Publications

2024

Exploring students' opinion on software testing courses

Authors
Cammaerts, F; Tramontana, P; Paiva, ACR; Flores, N; Ricós, FP; Snoeck, M;

Publication
PROCEEDINGS OF 2024 28TH INTERNATION CONFERENCE ON EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, EASE 2024

Abstract
Software testing is an important part of the software development lifecycle. As it is a highly sought-after skill in the industry, it is not surprising that there has been a great deal of research into the teaching of software testing in higher education. Most of this research proposes or evaluates pedagogical approaches or software testing tools to assist teachers in educating the next generation of software engineers. These evaluations are often limited to measuring teachers' opinions about the use of a novel pedagogical approach or an educational tool and students' acceptance and performance in terms of desired software testing skills. While tools and pedagogical approaches address specific aspects of a course, to date, little attention has been paid to the opinions of the students about all the individual aspects of a software testing course. This paper aims to address this missing student perspective by taking a holistic view of software testing course designs. To address this gap, an exploratory study was performed by distributing a questionnaire to 103 students from ten different courses to gauge their opinions on a software testing course they are enrolled in. The results show that students generally have a positive perception of the different aspects of their software testing course. However, several areas for improvement were suggested based on the gathered data.

2023

Quest-based Gamification in a software development lab course: a case study

Authors
Flores, H; Pinto, R;

Publication
International Conference on Higher Education Advances

Abstract
Motivation and engagement play a crucial role in student success in a course. Students may lose interest or underestimate courses that tackle non-core learning outcomes to their specific curriculum or program. Gamification, using game elements (e.g., rewards, challenges) in non-game contexts, is one way to motivate and engage students. Some educational courses use project-based learning, where students tackle problems, overcome obstacles, and gain knowledge. Quest-based games are designed as systems of challenges that players must complete to advance and win the game. They were linked with education by applying specific game mechanics to a computing course unit. This paper case studies the application of a quest-based gamification approach in a mandatory software engineering course to boost engagement among higher education students. Results were collected through observational methods and surveying the students, indicating a tendency for higher grades in course years implementing gamification while maintaining satisfactory levels of motivation and engagement. © 2023 International Conference on Higher Education Advances. All rights reserved.

2020

Teaching Software Engineering Topics Through Pedagogical Game Design Patterns: An Empirical Study

Authors
Flores, N; Paiva, ACR; Cruz, N;

Publication
INFORMATION

Abstract
Teaching software engineering in its many different forms using traditional teaching methods is difficult. Serious games can help overcome these challenges because they allow real situations to be simulated. However, the development of serious games is not easy and, although there are good practices for relating game design patterns to teaching techniques, there is no methodology to support its use in a specific context such as software engineering. This article presents a case study to validate a methodology that links the Learning and Teaching Functions (LTF) to the Game Design Patterns (PIB) in the context of Software Engineering Education. A serious game was developed from scratch using this methodology to teach software estimation (a specific topic of software engineering). An experiment was carried out to validate the effectiveness of the game by comparing the results of two different groups of students. The results indicate that the methodology can help to develop effective educational games on specific learning topics.

2020

Fostering soft and hard skills for innovation among informatics engineering students – An emancipatory approach

Authors
Torres, MF; Flores, N; Torres, RT;

Publication
Journal of Innovation Management

Abstract
Informatics engineers are currently in the spotlight of innovation. It is, therefore, relevant to analyse and reflect on how higher education can, and should, prepare future engineers to innovate as expected in this ever-changing world. This paper aims to further research and foster scholarly debate regarding the requirements and implications of teaching innovation. For that purpose, we examine an exploratory case study on interdisciplinary cooperation between two higher education courses, designed to promote students’ active learning of innovation through the progressive development of their soft and hard skills. Both courses engaged in an emancipatory pedagogical approach, mostly grounded in project-based work, active learning, and formative assessment. To obtain feedback on this interdisciplinary cooperation, questionnaires were devised to ascertain the students’ perceptions about this pedagogical approach. Individual responses were collected from both courses and data was analysed through simple statistical procedures. Articulating a priori soft skills development with a posteriori hard skills learning process is perceived by students as beneficial in gradually, yet successfully, understanding the subject of innovation. Also, there were even some external success indicators which showed the recognition of successful innovation skills development in informatics engineering students. Thus, according to students’ perceptions of their experience with an emancipatory pedagogy that connected soft with hard skills development, we conclude that such approach encouraged students to create new knowledge and allowed them to develop the necessary skills to innovate.

2018

End-to-end Automatic Business Process Validation

Authors
Paiva, ACR; Flores, NH; Faria, JP; Marques, JMG;

Publication
The 9th International Conference on Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies (ANT 2018) / The 8th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Information Technology (SEIT 2018) / Affiliated Workshops, May 8-11, 2018, Porto, Portugal

Abstract
Business Process Testing is the act of validating that end-to-end transactions through enterprise systems continue to work correctly as the underlying packaged applications evolve. End-to-end automatic business process validation can be a challenging task, but an important way to check that business rules continue to work properly and that problems are detected and corrected as soon as possible. This paper presents the design of a test automation platform, ETAP-Pro, to test end-to-end business processes that aims to overcome some challenges in validating business processes. © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Supervised
thesis

2023

Evaluation of perception algorithms performance based on a scenario simulation framework for autonomous driving applications

Author
Francisco José Fortuna Bastos

Institution
UP-FEUP

2023

You can hide but you can't run: browser extensions fingerprinting

Author
Lucas Vieira Casalderrey Vilard Stein

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

Hierarchical Classification of Pages: Combining Semantic and Web Graph Contents

Author
Filipe Miguel Alves Pinto dos Reis

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

Serviço de pesquisa de notícias em português para criação de jornais escolares digitais

Author
Ana Mafalda de Oliveira Santos

Institution
UP-FEUP

2021

SMART: Static and Dynamic Analysis to Reverse Engineer Android Applications

Author
Francisco Miguel Gouveia Serrão

Institution
UP-FEUP